Class . — 

Book 



SYNOPSIS 



OF 

THE AMERICAN WAR. 



BY 



J. R. BALME. 



AN AMERICAN CLERGYMAN, AUTHOR OF THE 
LEVER OF THE GOSPEL," " MIRROR OF THE GOSPEL," " MAGNET OF THE GOSPEL, 

" TELEGRAPH OF THE GOSPEL," " TELESCOPE OF THE GOSPEL," 
"TEMPERANCE AUXILIARY TO THE GOSPEL," " AMERICAN WAR CRUSADE," AND 
"LETTERS ON THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC." 



* * " What I have written is no idle fictioned rhyme. 

I paint the shadow of the curse of our country's blasting crime — 

A curse upon whose blackness — a wall of solid night — 

Come a scroll of ' Mene, Mene,' in lines of lurid light." 



LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. 
THE AUTHOR, WILSDEN, NEAR BINGLEY, YORKSHIRE. 

1865. 



v ■© 



CONTENTS. 



SYNOPSIS OF THE WHOLE. 

Page 



On the American Union, .... 547 

Constitutional Principle or Law, . . . 548 

Why and Wherefore, 549 
Abandonment of the Charters of Freedom, . . 549 

The Influence of the High and Low Tarriffs, Pro and Con, . 553 
God's Avenging Hand, . . . . 563 Q 

Separation, ...... 564 ' 

Invidious Comparisons, . . . . 565 

Emigration to the United States, . . . 567 

Sectional Jealousies, ..... 571 

Separation, Protection, and Freedom, . . . 572 

Bights of Self-Government, .... 574 

New Northern Confederacy, . . . . 575 

Declaration of Independence, . . . .576 

Texas Ordinance of Secession, .... 577 

Virginia do. .... 577 

Secession of the State of South Carolina, . . .579 

Alabama Ordinance of Secession, . . . 579 

Declaration of Causes, ..... 580 

A New Confederacy, ..... 585 

General Sherman and Governor Brown, . . . 586 

Brown's Beply to Sherman, . . . . . 587 

Southern Commissioners, . . .' . 590 

Bevolution, . . . . . 592 

War Christians, . . . . .593 

Freaks in the Chapter of Accidents, . . .598 

Difficulties in the Pathway of War, . . .599 

American Battlefields and Desolate British Homes, . 601 

On the War, ..... 605 

A Historical Parallel, ..... 607 

Coast Attacks and Blockade, . . . .611 

Western Military Division, . . . .615 

Federal Campaign in Virginia, . . . .626 

Southern Unionists, . . . . .627 

Northern Disasters, . . . . . 631 

Federal Magical Bod, ..... 632 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 



Lincoln's Proclamation, . . . . . 633 

Enlistment of the Negro, .... 631 

God and the Negro, . .... 649 

Military Juggernaut, ..... 643 

Miseries of War, ..... 644 

Fall of Richmond, r . . . . .647 

Rejoicings of the Federals, . . . .656 

Surrender of General Lee, . . . . 661 

Lee's Farewell Order, ..... 663 

Assassination of Lincoln, . . . . 664 

Assassins, . . -, . ,. . . . 669 

Letter of Wilkes Booth, \ . . . .681 

His Death, V . . . .687 

Assassins and Confederates, .... 688 

Abraham Lincoln, ..... 693 

Eulogiums, ...... 696 

Pro and Con, ..... 697 

President Johnson, ..... 699 

Peace Negotiations, • . . . . . 704 

United States, ..... 708 

Centralization of Power, . . . . 711 

State Sovereignties, ..... 712 

Eureka, ...... 714 

A Circle of Ladies and the Goddess of Liberty, . . 719 

Federal G is and the War, . . . . 721 

Federal Military Power and Success, . . • 723 

Specious Pleas of the Federals, • . . . 727 
The Fourth of March,. . . . . .727 

The Eeign of Terror, ..... 732 

/Reconstruction, . . w . . • 741 

/Education of the Negro, . * . . , 744 

-Peace and Reconstruction, .... 748 

Allegiance and Reconstruction, or the Appliances of Civilisation, 750 

Extermination, Confiscation, and Reconstruction, . . 751 

Generosity, Kindness, and Reconstruction, . . 754 

Progress and Reconstruction, D . 756 

President Lincoln and the Friends, . . • 761 

The American War and Missions of Mercy. . . 758 
God's Overruling Providence, . . . .762 



SYNOPSIS OF THE WHOLE: 547 



ON THE AMERICAN UNION. 

The above was simply and solely a Limited 
Liability Company. When the disruption took 
place it was composed of thirty-four states ; each 
of which possessed all the powers of sovereignty 
that belong and appertain to free and independent 
states. The constitution made provision for equal 
rights and privileges, specified the object for which 
the Union was created, defined the duties of the 
president^ and administrators, and was made the 
bond or treaty which bound them together, whereof 
each was to be its own interpreter, reserving to 
itself the power to withdraw from the Union at 
pleasure on the encroachments of its rights, or the 
violation of its law of compact ; and form such 
alliances as should seem to it desirable. And in 
the above concern the president and representatives 
of the different states were their servants ; elected 
by them to execute their sovereign mandate or will ; 
and held responsible for the trust reposed in them. 
The end contemplated in the formation of the 
Union was preservation from common danger. Its 
adoption was for economic purposes as well as pru- 
dential reasons. All the powers delegated to it were 
derived from the States. Its specific work was 
accurately and minutely described. The boundary 
line of its operations was fixed, labelled with the 
inscription, "hither shalt thou go, but no farther." 



548 CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE OR LAW. 

And to the sovereignty of the States it was indebted 
for the ground on which its halls of Congress and 
forts were built, as well as for its maintenance 
and existence. 

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE OR LAW. 

The great connecting link which united the 
States together in the Union — the central 01 
fundamental principle which constituted its ground- 
work — the essential, vital element of its existence, 
so grandly and broadly developed in the Constitu- 
tion, was equal rights to each state and to all men. 
This principle had been inaugurated into their 
councils in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, pro- 
claimed to the world in the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, and afterwards embodied in all the grand 
clauses of the Constitution. The entire fabric of 
our institutions was made to rest on the above 
basis at the commencement of our history as a 
people. Its development or growth was to create 
a mighty power in America that would make the 
" despots " of Europe, so called, tremble, and <c defy 
the world," transfer not only the balance of power, 
but also of trade, from the old world to the new ; 
when " Mark Lane would cease to fix the prices 
of American farmers, and Wales and Staffordshire 
those of iron." And as the masters of the world 
and commerce we were then to repose on the lap 
of peace and harmony, surrounded with an elysium 



ABANDONMENT OF THE CHARTERS OF FREEDOM. 549 

of comfort, a paradise of delight, the envy of the 
world. These bright visions and golden hopes, 
however, have not yet been realized. " America " 
has not become "the land of which angels might 
dream," as John Bright has described it. It is 
very far from that at present, and likely to be for 
some time to come. 

WHY AND WHEREFORE. 

We have noticed some causes in a preceding chapter 
as to the above which has produced such an over- 
cast in our American sky, and caused the hurricane 
storms of God's wrath to sweep across our land and 
produce scenes of lamentation, mourning, and woe, 
in the contemplation of which the head turns 
sick, and the heart faint. When we come to 
examine our history as a people, we do not wonder 
that the hand- writing should appear on the walls 
against us, or that the voice of God should thunder 
in the ears of ' Southerns or Northerns, of each and 
all, " ye are weighed in the balances, and found 
wanting." 

ABANDONMENT OF THE CHARTERS OF FREEDOM. " 

The Constitution and Declaration of Independence, 
to which the Fathers and Founders of our govern- 
ment had so solemnly pledged their lives, fortunes 
and sacred honour to maintain, and which they had 



550 ABANDONMENT OF THE CHARTERS OF FREEDOM. 

constituted the palladium or citadel of human 
rights, were soon abandoned and treated as obsolete, 
or made the instruments of treachery, trickery, and 
fraud. What was meant for good has resulted in 
unmitigated evil. Throwing aside the parchments, 
the administrators of the government proclaimed 
themselves to be the law, or rather by a tremen- 
dous feat of jugglery used the instruments of justice 
to foster the theory of protection and the slave-hold- 
ing interest, that they might oppress each other and 
multiply the victims of their cruelty instead of 
diminishing them. Speaking with the voice of a 
Jacob, they stretched out the hands of an Esau. 
Proclaiming their belief in the "preternatural philo- 
sophy" of the Union for the benefit of the world, 
like the Davenports, they slipped the constitutional 
ropes which were to bind them fast, that they might 
use them for purposes of fraud. 

One of the breaches made in the fundamental 
law of the Union was created by the adoption of 
the theory of protection. Franklin was one of the 
first to plant the noxious weed. In a letter written 
from England in 1771, he wrote as follows: — 
" Every manufacturer encouraged in our country 
makes part of a market for provisions within our- 
selves, and saves so much money to the country as 
must otherwise be exported to pay for the manu- 
factures he supplies. Here in England it is well 
known and understood that wherever a manufactory 
is established which employs a number of hands, it 



ABANDONMENT OF THE CHARTERS OF FREEDOM. 551 

raises the value of lands in the neighbouring country 
all around it, partly by the greater demand near at 
hand for the produce of the land, and partly from 
the plenty of money drawn by the manufacturers 
to that part of the country. It seems, therefore, the 
interest of all our farmers and owners of lands, to 
encourage our young manufactures in preference to 
foreign ones imported among us from foreign 
countries." 

Franklin's desideratum, therefore, was to bring 
the manufacturer and agriculturist side by side — to 
be the entire producers and consumers ; a world 
within themselves, independent of the rest of man- 
kind. 

These views were adopted by Washington and 
Jefferson, and took deep root in all the Northern 
States. In a series of articles published in the 
New York Tribune, in 185-i, on the "North and 
South," we find the following paragraph : — " The 
vast majority of the people north of Mason and 
Dixon's line have always believed with Franklin, 
Washington, and Jefferson, that protection tended 
to increase the value of labour and land, and to 
enrich both labourer and land-owner. Whether 
right or wrong in this, the votes of their representa- 
tives have on all occasions proved that the belief 
existed, and it does certainly exist to so great an 
extent, that were a vote now to be taken on the 
question, whether the question should be main- 
tained or abandoned, apart from all other issues, 



552 ABANDONMENT OF THE CHARTERS OF FREEDOM. 



an overwhelming majority would be found favour- 
able to its maintenance. Such being their belief, it 
would seem to be right and proper that they should 
be enabled to act in accordance with it, and yet, 
although almost thrice as numerous as the whites 
of the slave states, they have rarely been allowed 
to exercise the slightest influence upon the action 
of government in reference to this most important 
subject." The reader, therefore, will do well to 
weigh the following facts. 

" The vast majority north of Mason and Dixon's 
line have always believed in protection/' North of 
the above line they are protectionists. South, free- 
traders. Their interests, therefore, are as wide ?ts 
the poles asunder. 

"The votes of Northern representatives on all 
occasions proved the belief of this." 

In 1824 the tariff of that year was passed with 



the following vote : — 

Northern States for protection, 88 Against it, 32 

Southern do., 19 Do. 70 

For protection, 107 Against, 102 

In 1828 the vote was as follows : — 

Northern States for protection, 88 Against it, 29 

Southern do., 19 Do., 70 

For, 105 Against, 94 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



553 



THE INFLUENCE OF HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS PRO AND 
CON ON THE NORTH. 

When the tariff was high it was associated with 
glorious days in the opinion of the Northerns. 
" Public debts were paid off, emigration promoted, 
mills and furnaces built, the prosperity of the 
country was raised to a higher point than ever 
before known, whilst Nova Scotia, New Brunswick 
and the Canadas were ready to allay themselves in 
free gift with the North." But when the influence 
of the Southern belief in free trade was predominant 
in 1836, '40, '48 and '52, the writer in the articles 
referred to says : — "bankruptcy and ruin, rarely 
exceeded in any country, was the consequence ; the 
government became burdened with debt, its agents 
knocked at the doors of all the banking houses of 
London and Paris, Hamburg and Amsterdam, for a 
loan at six per cent in vain ; the losses of the 
people in those awful days we need scarcely state ; 
mills and furnaces were everywhere closed; labourers 
were reduced to the weakness, ignorance, and 
stagnation of bondage, and for the first time was 
heard in the streets of our cities the cry of sober, 
industrious, orderly men, c give me work, only give 
me work ; make your own terms — myself and family 
have nothing to eat." 

"Such being their belief it would seem to be 
right and proper that the Northerns," says the writer 



554 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



referred to, " should be enabled to act in accordance 
with it ; and, yet, although thrice as numerous as 
the whites of slave states, they have rarely been 
allowed to exercise the slightest influence upon the 
action of government in reference to this most 
important subject." And why ? Because the 
Southerns designated the tariff laws "abominations," 
and South Carolina threatened to secede from the 
Union in consequence of what she called " Black 
Tariffs," and regarded as an infraction of her rights 
as a sovereign state. And now we see since the 
disruption how the " enabling power " of the 
Northerns has been used in the adoption of 
stringent tariff laws both on the ad valorem and 
specific principle. How gladsome in heart and 
lightsome of foot they must be in the enjoyment of 
their rights as protectionists. The laws, however, 
are a violation of the fundamental law of the Con- 
stitution ;* a removal of one of its great landmarks; 
the abrogation of their charter ; the destruction of 
the citadel in which was treasured up and guarded 
their equality of right. 

Another breach made in the Constitution was the 
subversion and extinction of the principle of equality 
towards all men. Commenting on a discourse 
delivered by a Rev. Mr. Parker, the Charleston 
Courier says, " The truth is, that our government, 
although hostile in its incipiency to domestic slavery, 
and starting into political being with a strong bent 
towards abolition ; yet afterwards so changed its 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



555 



policy that its action for the most part, and with 
only a few exceptions, has fostered the slaveholding- 
interest, and swelled it from six to fifteen states;" 
and we may add, also increased its victims from six 
hundred and forty -seven thousand to four millions. 
And in the removal of this landmark there was no 
opposition from any political or orthodox religious 
party in the North amongst the principal denomina- 
tions at any period of our history, from the com- 
mencement until the outbreak of the present war. 
When referring to this sad change amongst the 
administrators of the government, and the over- 
whelming mass of people in the churches and states, 
the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in a sermon preached 
on the occasion of the reinforcement of Fort Sumter, 
from the text, " Go forward," reported in the New 
York Times, said, " There could be no disputing the 
fact, that for commercial causes, an element of slavery 
which had temporary refuge with us, granted by the 
unsuspecting fathers, has swollen to an unexpected, 
and unforseen power, and for the last fifty years has 
held the administrative power of the country in its 
hands, controlled patronage, and distributed appoint- 
ments." This it did not only in the Capitols of the 
States and halls of Congress, but also in the churches 
whose prudential Committees, and conventional 
wire-pullers, maintained a sleepless vigilance, and 
were unremitting in their endeavours to propitiate 
the " obscene goddess " of slavery. The churches 
had become so menial and abject in their bondage 



556 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



to the slave power, that pro-slavery men every- 
where found their way to the possession of their 
choicest gifts, and had assigned to them the greatest 
posts of honour. To obtain promotion the candi- 
date must be inducted into the American theory 
of blood distinction and blood equals, burn incense 
to Washington and Judson, and be the bearer of 
letters from men who have acquired some degree 
of pre-eminence amongst the corrupters and defilers 
of God's heritage, or he may go on a long pilgrimage 
and travel in vain to obtain the humblest office in 
the gift of the churches ; whilst on the other hand 
the slightest suspicion of possessing the smallest 
taint of abolition would cause church officials to 
tear up every root of friendship, scatter every 
vestige of his reputation to the winds, and heap on 
him calumny and abuse ; for up to the beginning 
of the present war the abolitionist in the Northern 
States of America, as well as the Southern, was 
everywhere at discount in the churches and States, 
and in that place which lies outside the sphere of 
sovereignty, called the district of Columbia. Pulpit 
doors and church doors were almost universally 
slammed in his face. Ostracised, calumniated and 
despised, he was considered a proper target to shoot 
at. Cut off from social intercourse, and almost 
ordinary business, he was doomed to be their law- 
ful prey. Elijah Lovejoy made his appearance 
single-handed to break a lance with the slave power 
in the Churches and States, but was shot down like 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



557 



a dog in the street. John Brown sets out on a 
sublime mission to rescue a number of slaves from 
the galling yoke of their bondage in the Southern 
States, that he might place them beyond the reach 
of the eagle's claws in Canada, but himself was 
caught up into the eagle's beak, and dropt into the 
hungry jaws of Virginia, which were smoothed in 
his destruction. Others were separated from loved 
ones, and driven from position, property and home 
into exile, where amidst years of deep anxiety and 
sorrow, days and hours were turned into weeks, 
months and years, associated with the cry from 
under the altar, " How long, Lord, how long ? " 
This course of degeneracy in its origin is fixed by 
the articles referred to in the New York Tribune in 
1833, but we trace its existence to the period in 
our history when Washington, Jefferson, and Madi- 
son spoke of the "compromises of the Constitution." 
It was the sad want of principle then, that after- 
wards became so fatal to individuals, churches, 
States, and the Union. The chief instruments in 
promoting it have been Northern politicians and 
divines, since one-third of the people in the South 
could not have ruled two-thirds of the people in 
the North without their consent, controlled their 
patronage, or distributed appointments in the 
churches, States or Congress. Besides, a large 
proportion of the Southern people received their 
education in Northern seminaries and Universities, 
and if they went to their homes with evil principles 



558 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



instilled into their minds by Northern teachers and 
.professors, can we blame the pupils so much as the 
teachers or instructors ? Moreover, the vast pre- 
ponderance of talent and genius has ever been associ- 
ated with the North, but made useless to a great 
extent and mischievous by assumption, asseveration, 
distortion, cunning, artifice, deception, fraud and lies, 
both in the churches and States, so that wickedness 
was regarded as cleverness, and the man who was 
the most successful in overreaching his neighbour 
was almost everywhere considered a smart man. 
This was so manifest to the Southerns that the 
Charleston Mercury, one of their principal organs, 
branded them in the churches and States as "huck- 
sters in politics;" represented them as men who 
" knocked themselves down to the highest bidder," 
and looked on them with supreme pity and sovereign 
contempt, in their adoption of a course of policy, 
which it says " was marked with cupidity, truck- 
ling and subserviency to the South." It is urged, 
however, that a change has come over the North- 
ern people. A change, indeed, but for the worse, 
when President Lincoln proclaims to the world that 
he is an anti-slavery man, and yet takes the oath 
to the Constitution as a slave document, and avows 
that "he would save the Union with slavery if he 
could." When Secretary Seward, in order to make 
a bid for the Presidency, declares in the senate 
chamber at Washington, "there have been times 
when we have surrendered the safeguards of free- 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



559 



dom, not that we love freedom less, but the Union 
more ; " when the Eev. Henry Ward Beecher, to 
shew his love to the Union, " protests/' in his Harper 
Ferry sermon, " against any counsels that lead to 
insurrection, servile war, and bloodshed ; " and, 
then incites the Northerns to an invasion of the 
South, and advocates servile " insurrection," and 
" war redder than blood and fiercer than fire," shout- 
ing until he is hoarse, " fight or die." When Presi- 
dent Lincoln, the Congress, and the Northern States, 
perform the part of " Low Comedians " in a new 
comedy, called the " Constitutional Amendment 
Act ;" in order to cast out imaginary clauses, called 
the " Compromises of the Constitution," which Ward 
Beecher in his Fort Sumter sermon avowed did not 
exist, declaring "There is no fact susceptible of 
proof in history, if it be not true that this Federal 
government was created for the purpose of justice 
and liberty. The instruments which accompanied 
it, and preceded it, and the known opinions of the 
men who framed it, prove this beyond the perad- 
venture of a doubt," demonstrating to the world 
that they were co-partners with the Southerns in the 
guilt and shame of slavery, thus publishing their own 
shame; and when the hope is expressed by leading 
abolitionists that " the war may be continued long 
enough to make the Northern people men ;" such 
a change cannot be regarded with complacency, or 
viewed with delight, but with detestation and 
horror. " But," say Northern advocates, "wherever 



560 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



Christianity lives and flourishes there must grow 
up from it necessarily a conscience which is hostile 
to any oppression and wrong." This is quite true, 
so far as real Christianity is concerned ; but not 
so in regard to the spurious system, so named, which 
has been so widely diffused in America, as taught 
by a Vandyke in New York, a Nehemiah Adams 
of Boston, a Stuart of Andover, a Lord of Dartmouth, 
a Professor Hoge of Princeton College, a Right Rev. 
Dr. Hopkins, or Bishop Hedding ; or as practised 
by Ward Beecher, Drs. Cheever, Nathan Brown, 
Eddy, Tyng and Mrs Stowe, who have stood in 
slaveholding relationships, or fellowships, appar- 
ently unconscious that Christian duty demanded 
that they should come out from the ranks of what 
Mrs. Stowe complacently calls "Lady pious slave- 
holders," " Christian slave-traders," and might have 
added revival negro-haters. It is still urged that 
" a great and powerful anti-slavery party resolved 
at last upon the restraining and control of slavery 
in the North." If so, the above party were very 
unfortunate in the selection of their candidate to 
represent them, since Lincoln, in a speech made at 
Freeport, Illinois, August 7, 1858, and published 
in his Campaign Book, avowed, " If any territory 
uninfluenced by the actual presence of slavery came 
to adopt a slave Constitution, I see no alternative,, if 
we own the country, but to admit them into the 
Unioa" To call such a party anti-slavery is a 
misnomer, a figment of the brain, a myth. Be- 



HIGH AND LOW TARIFFS. 



561 



sides, Wendell Philips, Esq., the highest authority 
in the North in such matters, in a speech made at 
the New England Antislavery Convention, May 30, 
1860, said, " there is no political antislavery exist- 
ing at this moment. There is no movement in the 
political arena that calls itself anti-slavery. Of 
course you know there is none in the church. 
You know very well that unfortunately the ballot 
box is a great deal ahead of the communion table 
in its knowledge of ethics ; and as we find no anti- 
slavery at the ballot box we cannot expect to find 
any at the communion table/' 

In the above sketch of the relations and condi- 
tions of North and South, we see that both have 
violated the fundamental law of the Constitution, 
and subverted the great charters of freedom ; but 
bad as the South is, and black as it is with guilt, 
it has had some redeeming qualities in connexion 
with it, which the North has never possessed, or 
cherished as free-traders ; and in regard to slavery, 
no men bowed their knees with profounder homage 
or burned sweeter incense to this national idol than 
Webster, Everet, Halle t, Cushing, Cho'ate, or Wm. 
E. Dodge, the great revivalist, so-called, all leading 
and influential Northern men, whilst the over- 
whelming mass of biblical interpreters and divines 
who made the word doulos to support what they 
called "the humanity and divinity of slavery filled 
Northern chairs in the Universites and pulpits, 
producing such deep rooted pro-slavery proclivity 
2 N 



562 



HIGH AND LOW TAKIFFS. 



amongst the people that Mr. Beecher in his Harper 
Ferry Sermon, professes to lift up his hands in 
horror, exclaiming, " When the love of liberty is at 
so low an ebb that churches dread the sound ; 
ministers shrink from the topic ; book publishers 
dare not publish or republish a word on the subject 
of slavery, cut out every living word from school 
books, expurgate life passages from Humboldt, 
Spurgeon, and all foreign authors and teachers, and 
when great religious publication societies, endowed 
for the very purpose of speaking fearlessly the 
truths which interest would let perish, pervert 
their trust, and are dumb, first and chiefly, and 
articulate only in things that thousands of others 
could publish as well as they ; what chance is there 
that public sentiment in such a community will 
have any power with the South ?" And when 
contrasting the North with the South he gives, 
in the same sermon, deeper and blacker shades of 
guilt and shame to the North where he says, " We 
heap on the coloured people obloquy more atrocious 
than that which the master heaps on the slave. 
They love their property. We do not own them 
so we do not love them at all." How black the 
picture of misery ! How dangerous the elements 
contained within the Union! How both parties 
have dug and charged mines, which by any current 
of events, or freak in the chapter of accidents might 
explode in disastrous ruin! To maintain that such 
a Union has " health in it," or is " dear to the 



god's ayjenging hand. 



563 



lovers of freedom throughout the world," is one of 
the most insulting mockeries and blasting burlesques 
that can be conceived. It outrages beyond possible 
endurance the common sense of creation. In 1861, 
the New England abolition chieftains said, "the 
only relief they could find in contemplating a thing 
so devilish and disgraceful, was to cherish the hope 
that God or some other power would ere long dash 
it in pieces like a potter's vessel" 

god's avenging hand. 

Could the old puritans rise from the dead, they 
would not be able to recognise those who claim to 
be their descendants in America, so opposed have 
they become to themselves in principle and practice, 
and if required to give their opinions concerning 
them, they would put the deepest and broadest 
emphasis on the passage of Holy writ, which reads, 
" children that are corrupters, a seed of evil doers." 
In America the reaping time comes very quickly 
after the sowing time. This is being vividly 
realised in our unfortunate country at the present 
time. What seeds of calamity and ruin have 
been broadcast in our land, and now what a harvest 
of misery and shame. How stupidly ignorant, and 
obstinately and wilfully blind those must be who 
shut their eyes to the fact, " that there is a God 
who judgeth in the earth." Some there are how- 
ever who acknowledge God's retributive providences 



564 



god's avenging hand. 



so far as the South is concerned, but raise a shield 
to protect the more guilty North, whose guiding 
policy was expediency and necessity to promote the 
ends of unity, thereby prostituting the principles of 
liberty, social rights, common honesty, the sacred 
virtues of Christianity, and the laws of the infinite 
God to the influence of the almighty dollar, and 
subjecting themselves to the direst displeasure of 
the Almighty, who has now come out of his place 
to make inquisition for blood. The above course 
is exceedingly wicked and foolish as well as pre- 
judicial to society, since it creates animosity and 
strife, and produces feelings of alienation as well as 
those of rancorous malignity. But were there no 
means of averting so terrible a catastrophy, or miti- 
gating the severity of the divine proceedure? 



SEPAEATION. 

Yes. These were the one to go to the right of 
Mason and Dixon's line ; and the other to the left. 
There was plenty of land to be possessed, millions 
of acres inhabited only by Indians and buffaloes, 
where each might develope their resources, and 
fulfil their "manifest destiny," without encroaching 
upon each other's rights. 

The objects sought to be attained by the Northern 
and Southern peeple were, as 1 already shewn, 
antagonistical in their free trade and protectionist 
policies and theories. As an able writer in the 



INVIDIOUS COMPARISONS. 



565 



New York Tribune declared in 1854, "the 
Northern portion of the Union seeking for pro- 
tection against the cheap labour system of Europe, 
and the Southern portion clinging to the British 
free trade system." 

Invidious comparisons were instituted, namely, 
that each bore each other on their " shoulders." The 
Southerns maintaining in a pamphlet called the 
" Union past and present," published at Charleston 
in 1850, "that the Northerns had the use of 
one hundred and forty millions of Southern capital ; 
and the disbursement of twenty millions of Southern 
taxes so that once separated from the North, the 
writer in the pamphlet referred to declares " Southern 
trade would revive and grow like a field of young 
corn when the long expected showers descend after 
a withering drought ; their ports be crowded with 
shipping and their warehouses crammed with 
merchandise ; also that the use and command of 
the above large capital would enable them to cut 
canals, make roads, tunnel mountains, and drive 
the iron horse through the remotest valleys till the 
desert should blossom like the rose." The Northerns, 
in reply, according to the articles referred to in the 
New York Tribune, avowed that " North of Mason 
and Dixon's line of the Ohio ; and of thirty-six 
thirty, we have land sufficient for hundreds of 
millions of inhabitants. We need population, and 
the surest way to bring it is to afford to the people 
of Europe reason for believing that by coming here 



566 



NORTHERN POLICY. 



they will be enabled to earn higher wages than they 
can obtain at home ; and enjoy in greater perfection 
the advantages of freedom. Every person that 
comes here is worth to the community all he costs 
to raise ; and the average cost of the men, women, 
and children we import is certainly not less than a 
thousand dollars. Northern policy, even as it is 
now carried out, attracts nearly 400,000 emigrants 
annually, few or none of whom would come under 
an entire Southern policy ; and to this vast 
immigration is to a great extent due the fact that 
in Illinois, the increase in the value of property in 
the year 1853 over that of 1852 was fifty-eight 
millions of dollars ; or more than five times as much 
as the annual value of that portion of our trade 
with the South. Had the Northern policy been 
fully carried out we should now be importing 
double our present rate, and every man so imported 
would be adding to the value of Southern products 
by consuming thrice, and perhaps five times as much 
cotton and sugar as he consumed at home. At the 
same time they would be adding to the value of 
Northern land and labour to the extent at least the 
sum we have named, or an amount of four hundred 
millions of dollars, being more than twenty dollars 
per head of the present population of the States we 
have assigned to a Northern Union. Adding this 
quantity to those already obtained, we feel disposed 
to place the loss of the North from the continuance 
of the Union at about forty dollars per head." 



EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 567 

Emigration, therefore, in its relationship to protec- 
tion as the means of working it out, is well under- 
stood in America by Chambers of Commerce and 
manufacturers ; and also by the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, as shewn in the following letter addressed 
by him to Thomas Bayley Potter, Esq., Manchester, 
England, and published in the Examiner and Times, 
March 7, 1865, along with an introductory letter 
from Mr. Potter. 

" EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 

" To the Editor of the ' Examiner and Times' 
"Pitnacree, Dunkeld, March 4, 1865. 

" My Dear Sir,- — I have this day received the 
enclosed letter from the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 
which I shall be glad if you will publish in your 
valuable paper. 

" The high character of Mr Beecher, and the un- 
doubted standing of many of the gentlemen con- 
nected with the American Emigrant Company, 
justify me in laying before my fellow-countrymen 
this letter with the fullest confidence. 

"I wish the ruling class in this country would 
take timely warning and do full justice to labour at 
home, both socially and politically, rather than per- 
mit it to be diverted to other lands. Apply the 
principle of free trade, which simply means im- 
partial justice and unrestricted competition, to land, 



568 



EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 



and the laws and customs which regulate its tenure 
here, as well as to every department of church and 
state, and we should not then see many of the best 
of our labouring class expatriated from their native 
country. All privileges held by the few which 
can be proved to be detrimental to the many are as 
unsafe as they are unjust. — I am, my dear sir, yours 
truly, Thomas B. Potter. 

"Brooklyn, New York, Jan. 16, 1865. 

" Dear Sir, — I believe I am rendering a service, 
not merely to a very trustworthy and honourable 
association, but to the depressed labouring classes 
of great Britain, in commending the American Emi- 
grant Company to your confidence, and that of the 
British public. 

" This company is composed of gentlemen of the 
highest social and pecuniary standing ; many of 
whom I know personally, and some of whom are 
among my best friends. It has been organised for 
the purpose of supplying the demand for labour in 
this country (so great that it has sometimes been 
spoken of as a labour famine) with the over-abun- 
dant labour of Europe ; thus rendering a service of 
great value to employers here, and of still greater 
value to the ill-paid and ill-fed labourers there. 
No undertaking was ever based upon a more legiti- 
mate demand for it, and the machinery employed 
by the company is admirably adapted to its end. 

It receives orders from manufacturers, and others 



EMIGRATION TO. THE UNITED STATES. 569 



in want of labourers, for a certain number and de- 
scription of men. This order is by the next mail 
sent to one of their numerous agents in Great 
Britain or Europe, and by an early steamer the men 
are brought to New York, and by the company 
transported to the place where they are to be em- 
ployed. The employer ordering the men advances 
the expenses of their emigration, and they bind 
themselves to labour for him for a year, and repay 
the advances from their wages. 

" Thus, the European labourer, who has not the 
means of improving his condition by emigration, has 
the means supplied, and when he comes over, he 
does so, not as has generally heretofore been the 
case, upon an uncertainty as to employment and 
destination, but with the certainty of a home and 
good wages. In addition to this the company 
assumes the protection and care of all emigrants 
who choose to come at their own expense to its 
care, and finds them employment in the interior of 
the country, removing them at once from the many 
evils inseparable from a detention in New York. 
And all this the company does without charge to 
the emigrant, but looking wholly to the employer 
for its compensation. 

*t The company does not profess to be a purely 
philanthropic one, but while doing a great and truly 
philanthropic work, has undertaken it wholly on 
business principles. The gentlemen composing the 
company are among our best business men, and the 



570 EMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. 



assurance of its success lies, as I think, in its busi- 
ness character. 

" I learn that the operations of the company abroad 
have been embarassed by a suspicion, quite general, 
that the agents are engaged, either directly or 
indirectly, in obtaining recruits for the United 
States Army. Let me assure you that the suspicion 
is wholly unfounded. 

" I speak from my personal knowledge of the 
active managers of the company, and from particu- 
lar inquiry made on the subject. The legitimate 
object of the company, which is one of too great 
importance to be needlessly hazarded, would be 
wholly defeated by engaging in such a business. 

" I understand from them that they would be glad 
of a most rigid investigation of any particular case 
that may seem suspicious. Whatever may have 
been done by others, you may rest assured that this 
company has nothing to do with obtaining 
emigrants for any other purpose than that of 
labourers in the ordinary industrial pursuits. 

" The Chamber of Commerce of the city of New 
York, whose opinion commands respect everywhere, 
has just adopted, by a unanimous vote, a report of 
a committee on immigration, setting forth the great 
demand for labour here, and the special induce- 
ments presented to foreign labourers to emigrate to 
this country, and commending in direct terms both 
the object and the character of the American 



SECTIONAL JEALOUSIES. 



Emigrant Company. — Very respectfully and truly 
yours, H. W. Beecher." 

" Thomas Bayley Potter, Esq., Manchester, 
England.'' 

Thus it is we see how Mr. Beecher, an avowed 
freetrader when in this country, lends himself to 
promote the vast schemes of the Northern protec- 
tionists, and to build up America at the expense of, 
and to the injury of other nations — whilst Mr. T. 
B. Potter's remedy is like Dame Partington's mop 
to dry up the Atlantic. 

Secti'onal jealousies and bitterness were created 
by the two policies which obtained between the 
North and South. This was very natural, as both 
desired to rise in the scale of prosperity, but when 
high tariffs prevailed Southern interests went down, 
and Northern ones rose higher ; but when tariffs 
were low, the Southern interests rose higher, and 
Northern ones went down. " Hence," says the 
Charleston Mercury, "the Northerns live upon us, 
and the South affords them the double gratification 
of an object for hatred, and a field for plunder." 

When, therefore, Northern and Southern repre- 
sentatives met each other in CoDgress and introduced 
their different schemes, whether on the tariff question, 
or the extension of territory, or the improvement 
of rivers, or the building of railways by land grants, 
each tried to intimidate and frustrate the designs of 
each other ; so that each believing that the other 



572 



SEPARATION, PROTECTION, 



was a dead weight on the wheels of progress, it 
would have been much better for them to have 
separated in peace, and each to have formed them- 
selves into a new confederacy. "But how was this 
to be accomplished," exclaims an advocate of the 
Federals? Was not the preservation of the Union 
to the North an imperial, imperious, and over- 
mastering necessity to which every thing else must 
bow 1 if the North could not conquer the South, 
must not the South conquer the North ? It was 
quite necessary for the North to subdue the South 
to carry out her protectionist theories and policy, as 
between the low tariffs of Canada and the free trade 
policy which would have been adopted in the South, 
the high tariffs of the North would have been 
" crumpled up/' which it dreaded, although such a 
result would ultimately have conferred immense 
advantages on themselves and on the whole world. 
On the other hand the slaveholding interest which 
has been fostered by both sections of the country 
would have received its death-blow. Instead of 
being able to extend the nefarious system to new 
territories, it would have been crippled in the old 
States where it had so long taken root, exerted its 
baleful influence, and destroyed the interests of men 
for both worlds. From the period separation took 
place, a process would have commenced which would 
have inevitably changed slave into free labour. 
The frontier line between the two is so long that it 
would have been impossible for the Southern States 



AND FREEDOM. 



573 



or government to have found men or means to have 
prevented slaves escaping into the North ; and 
whilst the Northerns would no longer have pursued 
their vocation as man-hunters for the Southerns, 
every slave escaping would have helped to create a 
demand for labour in the South, so that as the 
slaves came out, free labourers would have gone in, 
and this process would have brought with it the 
destruction of slavery without bloodshed. Much 
has been said about geographical boundary lines, a 
line of custom houses, and military out-posts. The 
writer attaches far more importance to lines of 
political affinity than those which are geographical 
or natural ; it will give him joy when all custom- 
houses are sw,ept away as a world nuisance, if he 
should ever live to see such an eventful day, and 
military outpost systems and standing armies are 
fast giving place to the volunteer system which 
forms the basis for the most efficient means of de- 
fence any country can possess. Canada is a source 
of anxiety and trouble to the British government at 
the present time in these respects, but we have 
reason to believe that this would not be the case if 
volunteer bands were organized and as thoroughly 
drilled and exercised in Canada and the British 
colonies as they are in England and the States. In 
such a case the old flag would continue to be a 
terror to the evil doers amongst the nations, as well 
as the praise of them that do well, with the right 
men to steer the national ship ; and the right 
principles and policy to control them. 



574 



RIGHTS OF SELF GOVERNMENT. 



RIGHTS OF SELF GOVERNMENT. 

These are founded on the sovereignty of each 
State, and the declaration of Independence. 

State sovereignty is a doctrine or principle in 
America which the people have been taught to 
admire and respect both by education and tradition. 
It is upon this basis that the foundation of the 
Government and the liberties of the people rest as 
their chief corner stone. " Destroy it/' said Gover- 
nor Brown of Georgia, and the whole fabric falls to 
the ground ; and centralised despotic power takes 
the place of constitutional liberty." 

Some avow that as the preamble of the Constitu- 
tion commences, " We, the people of the United 
States, in order to form a more perfect Union," &c, 
the local individual sovereignties were merged into 
one united national sovereignty ; or it would have 
been made to read " We, the several States ;" or 
the people of the respective States," &c. The 
great centralised power of a national sovereignty 
exercising supreme power, and wielding unlimited 
sway over all the States is entirely subverted in 
the tenth article of the amendment to the Consti- 
tution, which says, "The powers not delegated to 
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohi- 
bited by it to the States, are reserved to the States 
respectively, or to the people." Believing in this 
doctrine, South Carolina threatened to use her pre- 



NEW NORTHERN CONFEDERACY. 575 

rogative in her war with the " Black Tariff" so- 
called. Influenced by the same belief, Massachusetts 
discovered an evident intention to do the same 
thing. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who is now 
denouncing the doctrine of State sovereignty as a 
heresy, in a sermon preached October 30, 1859, 
proclaimed, as with the voice of a trumpet, "That 
these sovereign States are not united by any federal 
ligament, bat by vital interests ; by a common 
national life f that "a people had a right to change 
their rulers, their government, their whole political 
condition ;" and that " it belonged to all men on the 
face of the globe without regard to complexion." 
On January 31, 1861, in Association Hall, Albany, 
New York, at the Annual Anti-slavery Convention, 
the following resolution was adopted : — 

6. Resolved, therefore, That it is the solemn and 
imperative duty of the Senators and Representatives 
of the non-slaveholding States and Territories to 
return at once to their respective constituencies 
and take immediate measures for the formation of 
a new Northern Confederacy — that shall be indeed 
free ! the asylum of the oppressed of all nations ; 
uncursed by the presence of slaveholders, unstained 
by blood of slaves. 

Surely abolitionists or emancipationists cannot 
complain when others claim the same rights and 
privileges as themselves. 



576 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

This forms another basis of self-government in 
America; as it embodies the "rights of 1 776, 
when both North and South threw off their allegi- 
ance to England, and proclaimed as sacred and 
supreme the sovereignty of the people, created by 
the following self-evident truths, viz., " that all 
men are created free and equal ; are endowed by 
their Creator with inalienable rights such as life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that to 
secure these rights governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed ; that when any form of govern- 
ment becomes destructive of these ends it is the 
right of the people to alter, or abolish, and institute 
a new government laying its foundation on such 
principles, and organizing its powers in such form 
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their 
safety and happiness." In honour of these truths 
every fourth of July is ushered in, and celebrated 
by a magnificent display of bunting, peals of merry 
bells, arches of evergreens and flowers, processions, 
orations, the firing of cannon, bonfires, illuminations, 
fireworks, the blowing of trumpets, and the 
shoutings of the " free." 

On the above basis the Southern States claimed 
an equal right with any of the Northern States to 
secede from the Union ; and exercising it, passed 
the following ordinances of secession. 



TEXAS ORDINANCE OF SECESSION. 577 



TEXAS ORDINANCE OF SECESSION. 

[Passed Feb. 1, 1,661.] 

Sec. 1 . Whereas, the Federal government has 
failed to accomplish the purposes of the compact of 
union between thase States in giving protection 
either to the persons of our people upon an exposed 
frontier, or to the property of our citizens ; and 
whereas, the action of the Northern States is 
violative of the compact between the States and the 
guarantees of the constitution ; and whereas, the 
recent development in Federal affairs make it evi- 
dent that the power of the Federal Government is 
sought to be made a weapon with which to strike 
down the interests and property of the people of 
Texas and her sister slaveholding States, instead of 
permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield 
against outrage and aggression : Therefore, we, the 
people of the State of Texas, by delegates in the 
Convention assembled, do declare and ordain that 
the ordinance adopted by our convention of dele- 
gates on the 4th day of July A.D., 1845, and after- 
wards ratified by us, under which the Republic of 
Texas was admitted into the Union with other 
States, and became a party to the compact styled, 
"The Constitution of the United States of America," 
be and is hereby repealed and annulled. 

2 o 



578 VIRGINIA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION. 



VIRGINIA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION. 

[Passed April 17, 1861.] 

The people of Virginia in the ratification of the 
Constitution of the United States of America, 
adopted by them in Convention on the 25th day of 
June l788,having declared that the powers granted 
under the said constitution were derived from the 
people of the United States, and might be resumed 
whensoever the same should be perverted to their 
injury and oppression, and the Federal government 
having perverted said powers, not only to the 
injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppres- 
sion of the Southern slaveholding States. 

Now, therefore we, the people of Virginia, do 
declare and ordain, that the ordinance adopted by 
the people of this State in Convention on the 25th 
day of June 1788, whereby the Constitution of the 
United States of America was ratified, and all acts 
of the General Assembly of this State ratifying or 
adopting amendments to said Constitution, are 
hereby repealed and abrogated ; that the Union 
between the State of Virginia and the other States 
under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, 
and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession 
and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which 
belong and appertain to a free and independent 
State. And they do further declare that said Con- 
stitution of the United States of America is no 
longer binding on any of the citizens of this State. 



ALABAMA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION. 579 



SECESSION OF THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 

[Passed Dec. 20 th, I860, after Mr. Lincoln's 
election, but before his inauguration.] 

An Ordinance to dissolve the Union between South 
Carolina and the other States united with 
her under the compact entitled the Constitu- 
tion of the United States of America. 
We, the people of the State of South Carolina, 
in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, 
and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the 
ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the 
23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, 
whereby the Constitution of the United States of 
America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of 
Acts of the General Assembly of this State ratefying 
the amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby 
repealed, and that the Union now subsisting be- 
tween South Carolina and other States, under the 
name of the United States of America, is hereby 
dissolved. 

ALABAMA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION. 

[Passed Jan. 11, 1861.] 

Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and 
Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and 
Vice-President of the United States of America by 
a sectional party avowedly hostile to the domestic 



580 



DECLARATION OF CAUSES. 



institutions, and peace and security of the people 
of the State of Alabama, following upon the heels 
of many and dangerous infractions of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, by many of the States 
and people of the Northern section, is a political 
wrong of so insulting and menacing a character, as 
to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the 
adoption of prompt and decided measures for their 
future peace and security. 

Therefore, be it declared and ordained, by the 
people of the State of Alabama, in Convention 
assembled, that the State of Alabama now with- 
draws from the Union, known as the United States 
of America, and henceforth ceases to be one of the 
said United States, and is, and of right ought to be 
a sovereign independent State. 

Bills of grievances were made out, and published, 
as in the case of South Carolina. 

DECLARATION OF CAUSES. 

" And now the State of South Carolina having 
resumed her separate and equal place among 
nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining 
United States of America, and to the nations of the 
world, that she should declare the immediate causes 
which have led to this act. .... 

We hold that the Government thus established (the 
United States Government) is subject to the two 
great principles asserted in the declaration of inde- 



DECLARATION OF CAUSES. 



581 



pendence ; and we hold further, that the mode of 
its formation subjects it to a third fundamental 
principle, namely, the law of compact. We main- 
tain that in every compact between two or more 
parties, the obligation is mutual ; that the failure of 
one of the contracting parties to perform a material 
part of the agreement, entirely releases the obliga- 
tion of the other ; and that, where no arbiter is 
provided, each party is remitted to his own judg- 
ment to determine the fact of failure, with all its 
consequences. 

In the present case, the fact is established with 
certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States 
have deliberately refused for years past to fulfil 
their constitutional obligations, and we refer to 
their own statutes for the proof. 

The Constitution of the United States, in its 
fourth article, provides as following : — 

" No person held to service or labour in one State 
under the laws thereof escaping into another, shall, 
in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
discharged from such service or labour, but shall be 
delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such 
service or labour may be due." 

This stipulation was so material to the compact 
that without it that compact would not have been 
made. The greater number of the contracting parties 
held slaves, and they had previously evinced their 
estimate of the value of such a stipulation by 
making it a condition in the ordinance for the 



582 



DECLARATION OF CAUSES. 



government of the territory ceded by Virginia, 
which obligations, and the laws of the General 
Governments, have ceased to effect the objects of 
the Constitution. The States of Maine, New 
Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, 
Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, have 
enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Con- 
gress, or render useless any attempts to execute 
them. In many of these States the fugitive is dis- 
charged from the service of labour claimed, and in 
none of them has the State Government complied 
with the stipulation made in the Constitution. 

Thus the constitutional compact has been deliber- 
ately broken and disregarded by the non-slavehold- 
ing States ; and the consequence follows that South 
Carolina is released from her obligation. 

The ends for which this Constitution was framed 
are declared by itself to be to form a more perfect 
union, to establish justice, insure domestic tran- 
quillity, provide for the common defence, promote 
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of 
liberty to ourselves and our posterity. 

These ends it endeavoured to accomplish by a 
Federal Government, in which each State was 
recognised as an equal, and had separate control 
over its own institutions. The right of property in 
slaves was recognised by giving to free persons 
distinct political rights : by giving them the right 
to represent, and burden them with direct taxes for, 



DECLARATION OF CAUSES. 



583 



three-fifths of their slaves ; by authorising the im- 
portation of slaves for 20 years ; and by stipulating 
for the rendition of fugitives from labour. 

We affirm that these ends for which this Govern- 
ment was instituted have been defeated, and the 
Government itself has been destructive of them by 
the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those 
States have assumed the right of deciding upon the 
propriety of our domestic institutions ; and have 
denied the rights of property established in fifteen 
of the States and recognised by the Constitutions ; 
they have denounced as sinful the institution of 
slavery; they have permitted the open establish- 
ment among them of societies, whose avowed object 
is to disturb the peace of and eloin the property of 
the citizens of the other States. They have encour- i 
aged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave 
their homes ; and those who remain have been 
incited by emissaries, books, and pictures, to servile 
insurrection. 

For twenty-five years this agitation has been 
steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its 
aid the power of the common Government. Ob- 
serving the fomis of the Constitution, a sectional 
party has found within that article establishing the 
Executive Department the means of subverting the 
Constitution itself. A geographical line has been 
drawn across the Union, and all the States north 
of that line have united in the election of a man 
to the high office of President of the United States, 



584 



DECLARATION OF CAUSES. 



whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. 
He is to be entrusted with the administration of 
the common Government, because he has declared 
that that "Government cannot endure permanently- 
half slave and half free," and that the public mind 
must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course 
of ultimate extinction. 

On the fourth of March next this party will take 
possession of the Government. It has announced 
that the South shall be excluded from the common 
territory, that the Judicial tribunal shall be made 
sectional, and that a war must be waged against 
slavery until it shall cease throughout the United 
States. 

The guarantees of the Constitution will then no 
longer exist ; the equal rights of the States will be 
lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have 
the power of self-government, or self-protection, 
and the Federal Government will have become their 
enemy. 

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the 
irritation ; and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, 
by the fact that the public opinion at the North 
has invested a great political* error with the sanction 
of a more erroneous religious belief. 

We, therefore, the people of South Carolina, by 
our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing 
to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude 
of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the 
Union heretofore existing between this State and 



A NEW CONFEDERACY. 



585 



the other States of North America is dissolved, and 
that the State of South Carolina has resumed her 
position among the nations of the world, as a separate 
and independent State, with full power to levy war, 
conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, 
and to do all other acts and things which indepen- 
dent States may of right do." 

When the Union was made slaves were governed 
by laws made by slaveholders in all the Slave 
States. These laws were recognised as a fact in the 
Constitution, but never intended to be enforced by 
the Federal Government, or they would not so care- 
fully have excluded the idea of property in man 
from all its grand clauses. Had they, however, 
have been left entirely to State Government con- 
trol, as they were intended, when the Union was 
formed, the original charters might have been pre- 
served intact for freedom ; but they were taken up 
and enforced by the Federal Government, thus 
introducing a wedge of compromise, and making 
the Government at Washington a slaveholding 
oligarchy and responsible for the calamities which 
have befallen us. 

The unconstitutional acts referred to are the 
speech made by Lincoln at Springfield, Illinois, 
Personal Liberty Bills made in five of the Free 
States, so called, which conflicted with the Con- 
gressional Fugitive Slave Law, &c. 

A number of Southern States formed themselves' 
into a new Confederacy, determined to stand or fall 



586 



GEN. SHERMAN AND GOV. BROWN. 



together; and when an attempt was made by 
General Sherman to detach Georgia from her sister 
states, we see from the following article published 
in the Confederate Union, how he most signally 
failed : — 

"As much has been said about the informal 
message sent by General Sherman to Governor 
Brown, Vice-President Stephens and Senator John- 
ston, inviting them to visit the General at Atlanta, 
for a conference in reference to the state of the 
country, with a view to negotiations for peace, 
and as the public mind has been much excited upon 
the subject, some saying that it is the duty of these 
gentlemen to accept the general's invitation and 
make an effort to settle our difficulties by negotia- 
tion ; others contending that it was the duty of 
the governor to have seized the general's messenger 
and to have ordered him to be hung as a traitor, 
we have, for the gratification of our own and the 
curiosity of our readers, called upon the governor 
and inquired after the facts. 

u The Governor, in reply to our inquiries, stated 
that Mr. William King, who represented himself 
as the bearer of a message from General Sherman, 
called upon him and stated, in substance, that 
General Sherman had requested him to say to the 
Governor that he would be pleased to receive a visit 
from him and other distinguished Georgians, with a 
view to a conference upon the state of the country 
and the settlement of our difficulties; that he 



BROWN'S REPLY TO SHERMAN. 



587 



would give the governor a passport through his 
lines, with an escort, if desired, to go and return at 
such time as might be agreeable to him ; that he 
(Gen. Sherman) recognized him (Governor Brown) 
as the governor of the whole state, and as over one 
hundred miles of the territory of the state is now 
behind his line, he (Gen. Sherman) would allow 
the governor to go and visit his people in the rear if 
he desired to look after their condition, and return 
at his pleasure — that he would receive him and 
other distinguished Georgians at his headquarters, 
and treat them with the respect and consideration 
due their positions during the conference which 
he invited — that he did not wish to be compelled 
to overrun and desolate more of the territory of 
the state, &c. 

Governor Browns Reply. 

" After hearing the statements of Mr. King, the 
Governor replied : — 

" Please to make General Sherman an acknow- 
ledgment of obligation for the personal courtesies 
which you say he proposes to extend to me. But 
as he is only a general commanding an army, and 
I the governor of a state, neither the constitution 
of his country nor of my own country confers upon 
us any power to negotiate a treaty of peace. We 
probably held but few sentiments in common ; but 
if we should agree in every particular, we would 
have power to bind no one by any compact we 
might make. As our interview could therefore 



588 brown's REPLY TO SHERMAN. 

result in nothing practical, I must decline the 
invitation. While the portion of the state now in 
the rear of General Sherman's army is held by him, 
and the execution of laws of the state suspended by 
armed force, I know of no service which I could ren- 
der to the people of that section by a personal visit. 
If I could better their condition or mitigate their 
sufferings, I would, on their account, cheerfully go 
at the expense of any inconvenience or personal 
sacrifice which the trip might cost me. 

" To the remark that General Sherman does not 
wish to be compelled to overrun and desolate more 
of the territory of Georgia, I reply that no compul- 
sion rests upon him to attempt this, unless it be the 
cruel orders of his government. If he makes the 
effort, he will find much greater difficulties in the 
way of his advance for the next hundred miles than 
those encountered during his march from Dalton to 
Atlanta. Georgia may possibly be overrun, but 
can never be subjugated, and her people will never 
treat with a conqueror upon her soil. As a sove- 
reign state she had the undoubted right to dissolve 
her connection with the government of the United 
States, when the compact had been violated by the 
other States of the Confederacy, and to form a new 
compact, which she has done. She is as sovereign 
to-day as the day she seceded from the Old Union, 
and has the same power, by a convention of her 
people, which she then had, to resume all delegated 
powers and all the attributes of sovereignty, and 



BROWN'S REPLY TO SHERMAN. 589 



then to declare war, negotiate treaties of peace, and 
do all other acts which a sovereign state may do. 
While this power rests upon her people, who are 
the original source of all sovereignty, her constitu- 
tion, formed by them, has conferred no such power 
upon her governor. 

" The fact must not be overlooked, however, that 
while Georgia possesses the sovereign power to act 
separately, her faith, which never has, and I trust 
never will be violated, is pledged by strong implica- 
tion to her Southern sisters, that she will not 
exercise this power without consent on their part, 
and concert of action with them. In league with 
her Southern sister states, she entered into this con- 
test with full knowledge of all the responsibilities 
which attached to the act ; and come weal or woe, 
she will never withdraw from it in dishonour. 
However unequal may be the proportion of suffer- 
ing or sacrifice which her people may have to en- 
dure, she will never make separate terms with the 
enemy which may free her territory from invasion, 
and leave her confederates in a lurch. Whatever 
may be the opinion of her people as to the injustice 
done her by the Confederate administration, she 
will triumph with her Confederate sisters, or she 
will sink with them in common ruin. The intelli- 
gent people of Georgia already understand, and our 
enemy will soon learn, that the independent ex- 
pression of condemnation of the administration is 
one thing, and disloyalty to our sacred cause is 



590 



SOUTHERN COMMISSIONERS. 



another and quite a different thing. While the 
people of Georgia think for themselves, and will not 
blindly applaud the mismanagement of their rulers, 
they will never violate principle for expediency, nor 
accept dishonour for reward." 

SOUTHERN COMMISSIONERS. 

These were appointed and commissioned by the 
administrators of the Southern Confederacy to pro- 
ceed to Washington, open negociations with the 
Federal government, and seek to obtain a peaceable 
settlement of all questions involved in the separa- 
tion which had taken place. Lincoln promised to 
hear what they had got to say, but denied them 
the privilege of making known the objects of their 
mission. 

Seward opened up an intercourse with them 
through Judge Campbell, one of the judges of the 
Supreme Court, and promised him that no attempt 
should be made to relieve Fort Sumter, while 
negociations were going on, but to the surprise and 
consternation of the J udge, he was informed, mean- 
while, that such an attempt was made, which im- 
mediately suspended all communication between 
him and Seward, and caused the Commissioners to 
return to their homes. The magnetic wires were 
put in motion, and the treachery and insult of 
Seward was spread with the lightning's speed all 
over the South. Fired with resentment the 



SOUTHERN COMMISSIONERS. 



591 



Southerns flew to arms, made an attack on Fort 
Sumter, and captured it. When the news reached 
Boston, Wendell Phillips, Esq., announced that "a 
large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, 
have come to the conclusion that they will have a 
government of a certain form. Who denies them 
the right? I maintain that on the principles of - 
1776, Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier 
in Fort Sumter." Why, then, were not the 
Southerns allowed to "go in peace," as the Hon. 
Horace Greely and General Scott demanded? It 
was because Lincoln and his cabinet had resolved 
on war. " While the inaugural address/' says 
Lincoln, "was being delivered from this place, de- 
voted altogether to' saving the Union without war, 
the insurgent agents were in the city seeking to 
destroy it without war ; seeking to dissolve the 
Union, and to divide the effects, by negotiating. 
Both parties deprecated war ; but one of them 
would make war rather than let it perish ; and war 
came." Yes, came from wanton insult and insidious 
treachery ; came from unwilling hands and hearts ; 
yet " would make war " on those who " dreaded it, 
and sought to avoid it ;" and at the same time 
declared to the world concerning those who depre- 
cated it, "the government will not assail you ; you 
can have no conflict without being yourselves the 
aggressors." 



592 



REVOLUTION. 



REVOLUTION. 

All was now warlike. The Eubicon was passed. 
Bayonets bristled on every side. Commissions in 
the Federal army and navy were resigned, and 
new officers appointed to fill their places. The 
combatants arranged themselves pro and con. The 
air appeared to be scented with fire and brimstone ; 
whilst to the sound of drum and fife the tramp of 
armed soldiers beat time whilst on their way to the 
scenes of battle. But why these revolutionary 
scenes? Who originated them? And by what 
freak in the chapter of accidents did the great and 
terrible explosion come which has produced such 
appalling calamities ? If the original landmarks 
had been observed and faithfully guarded by the 
administrators of the government at Washington, 
golden ages of peace might have dawned on our 
land ; but both North and South made haste to re- 
move them, when, for the profit that waits on 
crime they joined hands together to adopt what are 
called the " compromises of the constitution." Hence 
the danger and difficulty of their future course. 

The South saw this, and openly and manfully 
said, "let us agree to separate." "No," said the 
North, " we are quite willing to take you and your 
sins to our arms and hearts, but if you go out 
of the Union we will make you return." " But 
look at the justice of the case," said the South. " It 



WAR CHRISTIANS. 



593 



is quite true," said the North, " that, like you, we 
have been great transgressors, and have broken the 
two tablets of our law ; but, being the biggest sin- 
ners in having broken the compromises, in the 
adoption of the Missouri Compromise, and the so- 
called Personal Liberty Bills, we have the right to 
the biggest share of the spoils ; and as we are the 
strongest of the two, our right is might" " But 
then," said the South, " there is the honour and 
brotherhood known and practised amongst thieves?" 
'* Yes," said the North, 

"When thieves fall out, the proverb runs, 
Honest men may expect their own ; 
But how, when thieves fall in with guns, 
Sabres and trumpets though unblown ? " 

There might have been, however, some probability 
of an adjustment of the difficulty but for the religious 
fanaticism which was at the bottom of it. This 
brings us to the real originators of the war ; the 
men who shout the Northern cause is ours ; " if 
ours, 'tis God's, and that's sufficient." 

WAR CHRISTIANS. 

How sad, and yet how true it is that a party 
answering to the above description has sprung into 
being in America, men who use religion not to 
soften the fierce conflicts of human passion, or to 
bid men remember that they are fellow-citizens and 
2 P 



WAR CHRISTIANS. 



brothers, but to swell the chorus of fratricidal hate, 
let out deluges of blood in order, as they say, to 
purify the land ; and after the fashion of Artemus 
Ward present their " wife's relations," or the model 
of Henry Ward Beecher, set apart their children, 
as sacrifices for the redemption of the land from the 
manifold evils of slavery. 

Their growth is of recent origin ; and it is some- 
what remarkable that the writer first conceived and 
developed the necessity of their being organized into 
a society on a moral force basis, which was taken 
up and acted upon at the commencement of their 
official existence as shewn in the following clause 
contained in their declaration of principles : — " The 
word of God our charter for freedom, and armoury 
against slavery." To the sword of the Lord they 
soon called the sword of the President of America. 
The first was not sufficient for them. With the 
latter they hoped to do wonders, as in a Circular 
issued by them at their annual meeting in the 
spring of 1861, they expressed the hope " by 
another year they might lay down their trust, and 
advise the dissolution of a society whose work 
should have been done." Their work, therefore, 
was to be short, sharp, and decisive ; grim, terrible, 
and very bloody. On the abrogation or perversion 
of their fundamental principles, like Washington, 
Jefferson, and Madison, they must have a compro- 
mise to their constitution, that they might claim for 
the President supreme power over all the states ; 



WAR CHRISTIANS. 



595 



define the Union to be one of law, to be upheld by 
force ; and demand that all resistance to the autho- 
rity of the President, and to the so-called "binding 
power " of the Union, which General Sherman calls 
" common law," should be put down as rebellion. 

These views and policies were first promul- 
gated in August 1859, at the extraordinary church 
meeting already referred to. The Rev. Dr. Cheever 
added to them the doctrine of servile insurrection, 
in his thanksgiving sermon, preached in the Church 
of the Puritans, New York, during the same year. 
With the above party the commercial men of the 
North, and also the idolaters of the Union, allied 
themselves ; the former dreading the abrogation of 
the navigation laws by the South, and a direct 
trade with England ; and the latter filled with the 
gorgeous phantom of an empire stretching from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, gathering in its embrace 
one hundred millions of inhabitants, whose presi- 
dent should dictate terms of peace to the world. 
At length the Beecherites joined their ranks, and 
then the Garrisonians, and last of all the Quakers, 
represented by Whittier, Coffin, and others ; so that 
by a combination of circumstances the "War 
Christians " acquired an immense power, which 
they did not fail to bring to bear on the President 
and Congress. 

The late President Buchanan was deaf to their 
entreaties ; but Lincoln, being a man of easy virtue, 
and fond of power, having " adopted for his creed," 



596 



WAR CHRISTIANS. 



according to Frederick Douglas, one of his menials, 
" evil from choice, and good from necessity," readily 
acquiesced in their will to form a centralized power 
from which imperious mandates should be issued, 
and bills of absolute and despotic power touched 
on the right hand, and on the left ; and also to 
draw on the " war power " for the invasion of the 
sovereign states of the South in defiance of state 
sovereignty doctrines, and the "rights of 1776 ;" 
that he might cripple their ancient allies, and use 
slavery, if necessary, for that purpose ; but refused to 
apply the freedom power of the Constitution, which 
by sharp practice on the part of both North and South 
had been turned into a slave power in our whole 
history, and given the Constitution through usage 
and custom all the force of a law to uphold, pro- 
tect, and foster the slaveholding interest. The 
war Christians were disappointed in the rejection 
of their favourite theory regarding the Constitution ; 
but elated with their partial success, they resolved 
to be on the look out for chances to press the ap- 
plication of the constitution for freedom. The fir- 
ing on Fort Sumter by the Southerns, in conse- 
quence of Seward's indignity and wanton insult, 
formed a grand pretext to be used in favour of 
urging their pleas with renewed power and vigour. 
On the occasion the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was 
preaching a sermon on the " Crisis," to incite the 
people to war. By arrangement, a telegram was 
handed to him on the pulpit platform, which he 



WAR CHRISTIANS. 



597 



read to the people, declaring " that Sumter is rein- 
forced, and Moultrie lies in ruins." 

M To describe the scene which ensued," says the 
reporter of the New York Times, "surpasses our 
ability — it beggars description — cheers, hurrahs, 
and shouts made the building ring — the waving of 
hats and handkerchiefs, and the simultaneous upris- 
ing of many hundreds of people made the scene one 
of the most remarkable and solemnly impressive 
that has ever been witnessed in that church of well 
denned opinion. Mr. Beecher appeared about six 
inches taller than usual, and his eye flashed fire as 
he looked on the enthusiasm of his charge." The 
reporter adds that "the audience sat spell-bound 
by the eloquence of the preacher, and woke from 
their trance only to sing the magnificent anthem, 
commencing 

4 My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 
Of thee I sing,' 

which was given with such a pronounced emphasis 
as to startle the neighbourhood for blocks around, 
and cause the very blood of the listener to leap 
with patriotic fervour." A "majestic uprising of 
Northern sentiment " for war, it is said, followed the 
fall of Fort Sumter ; although it would have been 
more majestic to let the "wayward sisters go in 
peace." Such are the men who have originated the 
war. 



598 FEEAKS IN THE CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. 



FREAKS IN THE CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS. 

Passing over the " War of Tariffs " in South 
Carolina, and what Massachusetts called the " War 
of Commerce" in 1812, when each threatened to 
secede, we come to the more recent incidents which 
have threatened an explosion. There had been a 
considerable encroachment on the rights of the 
South by the North, on the acknowledged basis of 
the " Compromises 99 of the Constitution. The 
Missouri Compromise had been adopted for the sake 
of peace. This act said to the Southerns, beyond 
a certain line you shall not bring what both North 
and South call property, into the common territory 
which belonged equally to both ; and to which 
both were entitled on their own terms and arrange- 
ment. The repeal of this act opened up a race for 
the settlement of Kansas and Nebraska ; brought 
into existence Ward Beecher's "Holy Bides," and 
the mightier and purer heroism of John Brown, 
who saved Kansas for freedom, in opposition to 
both North and South — tearing to pieces before 
their faces the " Black Compromises 99 of the Con- 
stitution, in defiance of, and expressing his utter 
contempt for, the Union. 

Lincoln and Seward each in turn threatened a 
war on the Southern states themselves, by an in- 
vasion of their acknowledged claims on which the 
" Compromises 99 were based, in order to make a bid 



\ 

DIFFICULTIES IN THE PATHWAY OF WAB. 599 



for the presidency. This is shewn in what the 
Southerns called Seward's " bloody Kochester 
speech and in the speech which Lincoln made at 
Springfield, Illinois — speeches which so enraged the 
Southerns that it was quite evident to the most 
cursory observer, if either were elected, the 
Southerns would secede. Each explained away the 
offensive paragraphs, or retracted them to appease 
the South ; but their cunning tricks or artifices did 
not succeed When Lincoln was elected, the 
Southerns withdrew ; and on the indignity stu- 
diously and deliberately put on the Southern Com- 
missioners by Secretary Wm. H. Seward, the sub- 
servient tool of Lincoln, the war commenced. 



DIFFICULTIES IN THE PATHWAY OF WAR. 

One of these was the infraction of all treaties which 
the Federal government had made with foreign 
nations. When the Southern States seceded and 
fell back on the rights of self-government, solemnly 
and sacredly guaranteed to them in our charters of 
freedom, every treaty which the Federal govern- 
ment had previously made with other nations be- 
came invalid ; and if the ambassadors of those 
nations commissioned by their governments had 
thundered at the door of the Secretary of State 
with their broken treaties or bonds, our war, with 
all its frightful tragedies and diabolical atrocities, 
as well as fearful calamities and wide-spread ruin, 



600 DIFFICULTIES IN THE PATHWAY OF WAR 



might probably have been averted. It would at 
once have been self-evident to our administrators at 
Washington that, in the presence of those broken 
treaties and the ambassadors behind them to enforce 
them, they could not have attempted the blockade 
of the Southern coast ; and, consequently, would 
have had less prospect or hope of subduing the 
South ; but, Disraeli-like, neither those govern - 
ments^nor their ambassadors ever called in question 
the validity of their treaties, or "impugned the 
conduct of the government of the United States in 
regard to them." Surely those governments did 
not know that the States of America were sovereigns, 
and that the President was subject to their authority 
as their servant ; or can we suppose that, knowing 
their rights, they dared not maintain them ; or that 
it was not to their interest to preserve their treaty 
rights intact ? There must have been either great 
ignorance, or timidity, or negligence somewhere. 
However this may be, whatever the motive, policy, 
or example that guided the nations in their conduct 
towards America at the commencement of our un- 
happy strife, there can be no doubt that our keen- 
sighted and sharp-witted lawyers at Washington 
must have been thrilled with emotions of joy when 
they found they were to be regarded by the nations 
as an absolute government, exercising jurisdiction 
over the Southern as well as the Northern States, 
and claiming the right to use supreme power on tne 
sea as well as the land, to force not rebellious sub- 



DESOLATE HOMES. 



601 



jects but sovereign states to an unwilling obedience. 
Our " Great Armada," so-called, was consequently 
got ready, and despatched with all haste to blockade 
Southern harbours and ports. One of the first con- 
sequences of this policy was the " cotton famine." 

AMERICAN BATTLEFIELDS AND DESOLATE BRITISH 
HOMES. 

Booming o'er the broad Atlantic, breaking on old England's shore, 
With the waves sad sounds are mingling, sadder than the surges' 
roar — 

A great Continent of brothers, heard wildly o'er the flood, 
Mutual desolation working, quenching brotherhood in blood. 

And England's hosts of Industry listen eager to the strife, 
For to them, as to yon armies, is the struggle Death or Life : 
Not on the battlefield itself is battle's power more dread, 
Than when it steals from helpless Want its scanty daily bread. 

And willing hands are idle, and the wheels of Labour still, 
And the swift machines are rusting in the grim deserted mill ; 
For thousands there 's no Saturday — there 's now no " wage " to 
come, 

And the wives and the dear little ones must want and weep at 
home. 

Methinks that nobler battlefields the Poets song may claim, 
Than those in which, through seas of blood, the victor rides to 
fame, 

Where no eye but God's may mark the fight — fought faithfully 
and long, 

By many a poor heroic soul 'mid the unregarded throng. 

Where Famine finds gaunt women, and lean and haggard men, 
Patiently, with dim hope, waiting till the good days come again — 



602 



DESOLATE HOMES. 



There — not where War's loud trumpet peals its fierce inspiring 
breath, 

The heroes fight, where fight is worse than front to front with 
Death. 

With garments thin, and black hearthstone, and the humble cup - 
board bare, 

What wonder if, 'mid frost and snow, the stoutest might despair ! 
But still they grandly rule their souls ; no murmurings are found : 
I bless my God for England — the great heart of England's sound. 

If the great heart of the nations were sound, 
and not blind to their interests, why was a 
door left open for the wolf of famine to come in 
and prey upon themselves, but more especially 
upon England ; for such were the scenes of dis- 
tress created by the illegal blockade of the southern 
ports, that even the late Kichard Cobden, M.P., in 
his speech at Midhurst, said, "We were suffering 
more than they were in America ; for except the 
actual strife in the battle-field, there were no towns 
in America suffering like Blackburn, Preston, Koch- 
dale, and other towns in Lancashire ? It was con- 
trary to natural justice that two commercial com- 
munities should fight in such a way, that in the 
process of fighting they inflicted greater injuries on 
communities at peace than upon each other." 
Another effect of this policy pursued by the nations 
was to tie up one arm of the South ; so that, being 
subject to an unequal combat, she has bravely 
struggled at fearful odds against superior numbers 
recruited from almost every nation, and possessing 



FEAE OF NORTHERN INSURRECTION. 603 



superior resources, with free access to all the world 
to replenish their stores. 

There was yet another difficulty to be overcome 
by the administrators at Washington before the 
course could be considered clear to wage war with 
the South, in order to put down what the "war 
Christians" called "rebellion." This was the fear 
of a Northern insurrection. Lincoln had been 
elected by a minority of the people in consequence 
of a division amongst the democrats. The latter, 
however, had a majority of members in both houses 
of Congress, and were unitedly in favour of the 
Union " as it was." To introduce emancipation 
would dislocate the wheels of Congress, and smash 
up the whole concern. Lincoln, therefore, stoops 
to rise. He reads himself into the Presidency, and 
takes the oaths of office, swearing to maintain the 
constitution as a slave document. The late Judge 
Douglas, then, the leader of the Northern Demo- 
crats, gave a significant nod of assent. Liberty was 
to be crucified, and, like Pontius Pilate and Herod, 
the Republicans and Democrats joined hands 
together. Douglas was to be rewarded by a major- 
generalship in the army, but died. Lincoln, how- 
ever, lived ; and for a season faithfully carried out 
his part of the bargain. Seward was so full of joy 
that he telegraphed to the Chamber of Commerce, 
Milwaukie, as follows : — " I tell you, my friends, 
slavery is not to be taken into account. We are 
to save the Union first, and then save everything 



604 DIFFICULTIES IN THE PATHWAY OF WAR. 

else that is worth saving." Amalgamating and 
consolidating the great political parties of the North 
on the above basis, the Union became the harp of 
a thousand strings to thrill their emotions, and 
awake their enthusiasm. But what of the religious 
principles and habits of the people flowing out of 
our extraordinary revivals of religion? Surely 
these will create insurmountable obstacles and 
make war a myth, a phantom of the imagination, 
a creation of the fancy, a mere figment of the 
brain in a land described to be so " dear to the 
lovers of freedom throughout the world ;" and 
which, according to Bishop Simpson's theory, " the 
Almighty could not do without/' 

If we are to believe such men as Caughey, the 
American revivalist, who deserved the doom of 
Jonah when he left his country to perish, and came 
over the Atlantic, abandoning the stern post of 
duty that he might enjoy the gourd of a temporal 
prosperity and popularity, Caughey in his " Let- 
ters " said, " Our extraordinary revivals of religion 
will be a preservative against war ;" and the Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher in his sermon called " Sum- 
mer in the Soul," declared " war to be impossible 
in America ;" so that where there was no " summer 
in the soul," there was to be the constant summer 
of peace around the persons of those who reposed 
under their vines and fig-trees in our so-called 
" Happy Land." How harsh and dissonant the 
sounds of the war-whoop must be amidst such a 



ON THE WAR. 



605 



poetic scene ! And yet our American " summer of 
peace " has received into its bosom a war which is 
on so gigantic a scale that no intellect however 
colossal can grasp it, whilst those who have been 
the most active in our revivals of religion are 
urging " war to the knife, and the knife to the 
handle," with a brutality and ferocity that would 
have made the old Turks and Saracens blush for 
shame. 

ON THE WAR. 

The course being clear, Lincoln and his cabinet 
resolved on war; and being sanguine in their ex- 
pectations of speedy success, were quite eager for 
the bloody strife. Estimating their numerical 
strength, vast resources of wealth, power to block- 
ade the Southern ports, freedom of access to all 
nations to obtain hirelings to fight their battles, 
some of the Northern soldiers provided themselves 
with halters to hang up Jeff. Davis, the Southern 
president, and his administrators, whilst Seward 
announced that it would only be a " ninety days' 
wonder/' but the opening campaign was against 
them at Fort Sumter, and also at the battle of Bull 
Run, when the grand army of the North was seized 
with a panic, rushed headlong from the field of 
battle, one disorganised mass, throwing away their 
halters and swords in a tremendous race towards 
Canada for their own dear lives, fearful lest they 



606 



ON THE WAK. 



should fall a prey to the men whom they intended 
so ignominiously to destroy. Fort Sumter, however, 
was to be revenged, not one stone was to be left piled 
on another to mark the spot where the city of Charles- 
ton stood, and after its foundations were ploughed up, 
it was to be sown with salt for four successive years. 
However, it has been defended by a brave and 
chivalrous people, and to all human probability 
would never have yielded to the enemy, had not 
Gen. Sherman threatened them in the rear, which 
caused its brave defenders to abandon their fortifi- 
cations and leave Charleston to its fate. 

Richmond also was to be made an example of, 
and Gen. Lee and his brave army were to be anni- 
hilated, but Northern generals and soldiers have 
hitherto been unable to accomplish this mighty and 
formidable task. Under M'Clellan, Burnside, 
Hooker, Meade, and Grant, bloody battles have been 
fought, rivers of blood shed, an army of cripples 
created, the valley of the Shenandoah turned into 
the shadow of death, and the pathway to Richmond 
marked by the graves of soldiers who have fallen 
in battle ; but Gen. Lee, notwithstanding his 
tremendous losses in men, and his great loss of the 
brave Stonewall Jackson, still makes the doomed 
city with his heroic soldiers a place of refuge and a 
tower of strength whence he hurls destruction on 
his foes. Vast armies, however, are gathering 
around Richmond on all sides to make its hills and 
valleys one vast camp, and cover its rivers with an 



COMFORT FOR THE SOUTH 



607 



immense flotilla of armed men. Gen. Grant elated 
with the prospect telegraphs that "in a few more 
days Richmond will be hemmed in, and its fate 
sealed." Portentous shadows, therefore, exclaim 
Federal advocates are beginning to stretch them- 
selves over the above city. A great carnival is 
approaching, in which the angel of death is to cut 
down Lee and his scarred and sun-tanned veterans, 
or they are to be formed into a line to await the 
executive clemency at Washington with halters 
around their necks for defending their rights of self 
government which they had been taught to believe 
encircled their fires, altars, and homes. How fearful 
the destiny that now seems poised over them in the 
darkening air around Richmond, the scales of which 
our Northern invaders claim are to decide the future 
of the vast continent of America in their o wn favour. 
Amidst the rejoicings, however, created by Gen, 
Grant's telegram in the North, a warning voice is 
heard, which shewed that Southern sympathizers 
clung to hope against hope, as they proclaimed 
comfort for the South. 



A HISTORICAL PARALLEL. 

The New York Daily News thus cautions those 
ardent men among the Federals who suppose that 
the end of the rebellion has come : — 

The opposing armies of the South and of the 
North are now manoeuvring on classic ground ; 
and although the analogies of the past prove 



608 



COMFORT FOR THE SOUTH. 



nothing, they are sufficiently impressive to be worth 
recalling. The irregular triangle of South Carolina, 
from the Savannah River to the Northern boundary, 
long ago was watered with blood and trodden by 
armed feet. A " rebel" army was once hemmed in 
close to the mountain range, cut off from every sea- 
port, and yet came off victorious. Let us, bearing in 
mind the relative positions and probable strategy 
of the adverse forces now, briefly retrace the past. 
At the end of 1778, Savannah was taken by the 
British almost without a struggle. In March, 1779, 
Augusta was captured, and not very long afterwards 
Charleston, which had successfully resisted assault 
and siege, was surrendered to Sir Henry Clinton. 
In succession fell Wilmington and Newbern, and 
' later still, Richmond ; so that literally not a foot- 
hold on the coast was in the possession of the 
" rebels" of those days. 

Then began the triumphant march of Cornwallis, 
almost on the track which Sherman is now pursu- 
ing. He advanced on Camden, and defeated the 
" rebels" under Gates. They fled in disorder to 
North Carolina, as far as Hillsborough ; and a re- 
cent historian thus describes the desperate state 
of things ; " The three most Southern States," 
says Mr Hildreth, " had not a single battalion in 
the field, nor were the next three better pro- 
vided. The Virginia line had been mostly captured 
at Charleston, or dispersed in subsequent engage- 
ments. The same was the case with North 
Carolina regiments. The recent battle of Camden 



COMFORT FOR THE SOUTH. 



609 



had reduced the Maryland line to a single regiment, 
the Delaware line to a single company." Then it, 
was that General Greene was put in command, hir* 
right hand man and main reliance being Henry 
Lee of Virginia, Washington's friend and Robert E. 
Lee's illustrious father. And what did such men 
say and think ? It was an hour of gloom but not 
of despair. The same serene faith shone in their 
words as now brightens in the heroic language of 
the Confederate leaders. But we repeat, it was a 
day of sharp trial. "Unless this army," wrote 
General Greene, " is better supported than I see 
any prospect of, the country is lost beyond redemp- 
tion, for it is impossible to struggle much longer 
under present difficulties." "If the French," he 
said again, "cannot afford assistance to the South- 
ern States, in my opinion there will be n^ opposi- 
tion this side Virginia ; and I expect the enemy 
will possess all the lower country. We must take 
possession and fight on the rivers above." Thus 
desperate was this "rebel" cause in May, 1781. 
Then came the reflux of the tide. The assail insr 

o 

army advanced as far as Salisbury in North 
Carolina — one hundred and fifty miles further north 
than Sherman is now. Lord Rawdon and Taiieton 
were raiding in the rear. Richmond was given up 
to Arnold. But the energy of a brave people was 
aroused in the defence of home even in the moment 
of discomfiture and dismay. A great flank move- 
ment was conceived and executed. The lines of 
2 Q 



610 COAST ATTACKS, AND BLOCKADE. 

the invader were threatened both in front and 
laterally, and the battles of Ninety-six and King's 
Mountain, the Gowpens, Guildford, and Eutaw 
were fought and won. South Carolina was 
abandoned to the rebels, and Cornwallis, crossing to 
the sea at Wilmington, and then fighting his way 
by another route to the James, met his doom, and 
the war ended. These are impressive incidents of 
ancient days, on which in the -flush of apparent 
success it may be well to meditate. 

V 

COAST ATTACKS, AND BLOCKADE. 

The olockade by our " Great Armada " so called, 
has almost shut out the Southern States from the 
outside world, and must have sadly interfered with 
their luxuries and necessaries. Our Northern 
people bitterly complained when the British govern- 
ment recognised the belligerent rights of the South. 
It, however, could not have performed an act of 
greater or more signal service to the Federal govern- 
ment, because as Lord Russell in a speech made in 
the British House of Commons, March 23rd 1865, 
said, " If we had not acknowledged those rights, 
the government of the United States would have had 
no right to interfere with neutral commerce to the 
ports of the Southern States." In such a case there 
would have been no " Cotton Famine," or desolate 
British homes in Lancashire ; and the Southern 
people would not have been so embarassed in their 



COAST ATTACKS, AND BLOCKADE. 611 

efforts to raise the means to defend themselves from 
their invaders. The advantages to England and 
to the Confederacy of the Southern States, there- 
fore, would have been manifold by the non-recogni- 
tion of the Southern States as belligerents ; although 
they had a claim not only for belligerent rights, but 
for recognition as sovereign states, entitled to be 
free and independent nations. It would have been 
far better for the South to have been treated as 
pirates, than to have been subject to the rigours of 
an illegal blockade. This has been a terrific instru- 
ment in the hands of the North with which to 
punish the South ; and, indirectly, England. Next 
to the establishment of the blockade, naval attacks 
were planned on *the James river, at Newbern, 
Charleston, Wilmington, Mobile, Savannah, New 
Orleans, Galveston and other places. 

New Orleans was captured at an early period of 
the war by Admiral Farragut, and placed under the 
governorship of General Butler, whom Professor Gold- 
win Smith calls "his model of a revolutionary chief," 
and afterwards of General Banks — men who, like 
many others to whom we have referred, will occupy 
an odious page in the melancholy annals of the war 
for walking straight on in their wild way unre- 
strained in their passions for revenge or plunder. 
Already Butler has been dismissed, not for insult- 
ing "ladies as women of the town" not for acquir- 
ing sudden wealth in connexion* with his extra- 
ordinary " trade permits," or " tickets of leave," 



612 



COAST ATTACKS, AND BLOCKADE. 



not for his gigantic blunder in making the 
" Dutch Gap Canal," but for his supposed coward- 
ice in not assaulting Fort Fisher. 

To all appearance General Banks has come to 
grief, also, not for issuing an address which com- 
mences, "in order to prepare the negroes for liberty, " 
and continues, " the negro is not allowed to make 
a contract," whilst under his " beautiful " organiza- 
tion of labour, according to Col. Mackay's report. 
" whipping was undoubtedly practised." No, his 
grief arises in consequence of an expedition to the 
Red River which General Banks fitted out, not for 
military objects and purposes, but according to the 
testimony of Admiral Porter before a Committee at 
Washington " to steal cotton/' # The result was, that 
the Confederates inflicted the severest punishment, 
and all but annihilated them, whilst Secretary 
Chase, the new Federal judge, has decided that the 
cotton stolen by them cannot be awarded as "prize 
money." Newbern, and more recently Wilmington, 
were captured by the Federal marines. The latter 
was the principal port for blockade running ; and 
consequently was of the most importance to the 
South in their present fearful struggle for independ- 
ence. Charleston has been made immortal in 
history by its long and stubborn resistance to the 
iron hail of the Federals ; and, but for Sherman's 
approach from the interior, would still have pre- 
sented an effectual resistance to the Federal navy. 
On being evacuated immense property was destroyed 
by the Confederates, 



IMPROVEMENT IN THE NORTH. 



613 



Savannah fell from the same cause as Charleston. 
Mobile has been captured by a combined force on 
sea and land. 

These crushing calamities which have befallen 
the South have made the Northern people as 
"merry as a marriage bell," and inspired them with 
the hope that the end of the war is near. Bright 
visions, therefore, are floating before the eyes of the 
Federals, some of which are being transcribed to 
paper as a reality. Take the following as a speci- 
men : — 

IMPROVEMENT IN THE NORTH. 

The Daily News' New York correspondent, 
writing on March 16 th, says : — Owing to the gen- 
eral impression that the end is very near, there is 
now little or no difficulty in raising as many men 
as may be needed without resorting to compulsory 
measures ; and the subscriptions to the seven thirty 
loan continue to come in on such an enormous scale, 
coupled with the accession of Mr. M'Culloch to the 
Treasury department, that the financial situation 
seems to have moderated. Which ever way one 
looks, in short, one sees nothing but unbounded 
hope and confidence, and I may add, all the ordinary 
indications of unbounded prosperity. Trade in the 
great towns is suffering from the suspense caused by 
the military operations, but the work of production 
goes on with a vigour and rapidity that no famili- 



614- IMPROVEMENT IN THE NORTH. 

arity with it seems to render less impressive. One 
hears of nothing but the enormous yield of petroleum 
wells, of gold and copper, and coal mines, of the 
teeming harvests, which horses and machinery only 
are able to extract from the virgin soil of the West, 
of railroads breaking down under the weight of 
their goods traffic, of the increase of comfort, and 
even of luxury amongst all classes and conditions of 
the people. The scum of the European immigration 
is to be found, no doubt, miserable as ever, in the 
alleys and lanes of New York and Boston, but no- 
where else do I hear of or see signs of poverty. 
Everybody I know anything about is, to all appear- 
ance, better off than he was three or four years ago. 
The hotels are crowded, the railways are crowded ; 
the great newspaper proprietors are making large 
fortunes, though the high price of paper has ruined 
the smaller ones; the schools are crowded, and books 
never seemed to sell better, though fewer of course, 
are imported from Europe. Ticknor and Field, of 
Boston, have just sold 75,000 copies of " Enoch 
Arden I" You may shake your head over all this, 
and say that " there will be a grand crash" yet ; you 
will get nobody to believe you or heed you. Every 
man you meet will tell you, with glowing eyes, that 
they will pay this debt with an ease that will astonish 
the world, and resume specie payments with a rapid- 
ity that every political economist in Europe will 
declare impossible. The anti-slavery men are pre- 
paring to enfranchise the negro, simply imposing a 



THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 615 

light educational test, with a confidence in the elevat- 
ing and enlightening power of political privileges, 
which to most European statesmen must seem appal- 
ling. " All men up," says a friend writing to me 
a few days ago, a man of fortune and culture, " is 
our motto." 

What a specious plea by which to obtain men, 
and means, to carry on the present diabolical war in 
America • The great big plaster generally used to 
cover up the atrocities and infamy of the war has 
been the "plaster of freedom," but now that it is 
failing them, prosperity with its luscious fruits and 
golden baits is hung before the world to tempt men 
to enlist, and to invest in Federal " securities." 

THE WESTERN, OR MILITARY DIVISION OF THE 
MISSISSIPPI. 

This has been a most successful department of 
the Federals. At first Gen. Buell made slow pro- 
gress with his army. The Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher said, that " he crawled like a turtle, when 
he ought to have flown like an eagle." Under 
Gen. Grant it achieved successes which obtained the 
thanks of the President, Congress, and the Northern 
people, but the greatest victories were reserved for 

it under Gen. Sherman. On assuming the COm- 
cs 

mand of the Western Federal army, he undertook 
an expedition into Georgia. The place of his 
destination was Atlanta, the "Gate City," so called, 



616 THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

of the State, where were located its foundries, 
arsenals, and workshops, deemed secure by their 
distance, from the Northern base of operations, and 
the apparent impregnable obstacles intervening. 
His pathway, therefore, was through a country 
which was full of natural barriers, as well as fortified 
places. Discarding the old policy of sitting down 
before them and taking them by assault or tiring 
them out by siege, which has always been associated 
with a fearful loss of life, and made military move- 
ments slow, solemn, and difficult, Gen. Sherman 
adopted the process of flanking, which compelled 
the Confederates to abandon one fortified place 
after another in rapid succession, until he reached 
Atlanta, the goal of his aspirations, and contem- 
plated operations when he set out on his march into 
Georgia. 

In a " Congratulatory Order * to his soldiers, 
dated Atlanta, Sunday, Sep. 11, 1864, Gen. Sherman 

says : — 

" On the first day of May we were lying in 
garrison, seemingly quiet, from Knoxville to Hunts- 
ville, and our enemy lay behind his rocky-faced 
barrier at Dalton, proud, defiant, and exulting. 
He had had time since Christmas to recover from 
his discomfiture on the Mission Ridge, with his 
ranks filled, and a new commander-in-chief, second 
to none of the Confederacy in reputation for skill, 
sagacity, and extreme popularity. 

"All at once our armies assumed life and action, 



THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 6 1 7 

and appeared before Dalton : threatening Rocky 
Face we threw ourselves upon Resaca, and the rebel 
army only escaped by the rapidity of its retreat, 
aided by the numerous roads with which he was 
familiar, and which were strange to us. 

" Again he took post at Altoona, but we gave him 
no rest, and by a circuit toward Dallas, and a sub- 
sequent movement to Ackworth, we gained the 
Altoona Pass. Then followed the eventful battles 
about Kenesaw, and the escape of the enemy across 
the Chattahoochee River. 

" The crossing of the Chattahoochee, and breaking 
of the Augusta road, were most handsomely executed 
by us, and will be studied as an example in the art 
of war. At this stage of our game, our enemies 
became dissatisfied with their old and skilful com- 
mander, and selected one more bold and rash. 
New tactics were adopted. Hood first boldly and 
rapidly, on the 20th of July, fell on our right at 
Peach Tree Creek, and lost. 

" Again, on the 2 2d, he struck our extreme left, 
and was severely punished ; and finally again, on 
the 28th, he repeated the attempt on our right, and 
that time must have been satisfied, for since that 
date he has remained on the defensive. We slowly 
and gradually drew our lines about Atlanta, feeling 
for the railroads which supplied the Rebel army and 
made Atlanta a place of importance. 

" We must concede to our enemy that he met these 
efforts patiently and skilfully, but at last he made 



618 THE MILITAEY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 



the mistake we had waited for so long, and sent 
his cavalry to our rear, far beyond the reach of 
recall. Instantly our cavalry was on his only re- 
maining road, and we followed quickly with our 
principal army, and Atlanta fell into our possession 
as the fruit of well-concerted measures, backed by 
a brave and confident army. 

" This completed the grand task which had been 
assigned us by our Government, and your General 
again repeats his personal and official thanks to all 
the officers and men composing this army, for the 
Indomitable courage and perseverance which alone 
could give success." 

It was fully expected, however, that a desperate 
conflict awaited Sherman before he could march his 
columns into the above named city, .as the Southerns 
had vowed that the Yankees should never press its 
pavement with their feet ; but on approaching the 
city, a negro, named " Julius," first announced its 
evacuation by Gen. Hood, the commander of the 
Southern army, in the following extraordinary 
manner, " For Gor Amighty, Massa, de debil is dar 
sure enuff," referring to the miniature earthquakes 
occasioned by the blowing up of magazines, the ex- 
plosion of ammunition, the bursting of bombshells 
and guns to prevent them falling into the hands of 
the enemy. The news spread from ient to tent, 
and from regiment to regiment with the utmost 
rapidity, until it permeated the whole army, and even 
to the hospitals, where the mortally wounded rose 



THE M1LITAEY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 619 

from their couches of pain to listen to the intelli- 
gence which was on every lip, " Atlanta is ours." 

The soldiers now claimed rest after their long 
weary marches and severe skirmishes, and battles, 
consequently, the defenceless inhabitants were 
driven out to accommodate them under the plea of 
military necessity, but as Gen. Hood got upon 
Sherman's rear with his army and broke up his 
communications, Gen. Sherman was compelled to 
relax his hold on Atlanta to the inconceivable joy 
of those who, a short time previously, had been made 
houseless, homeless wanderers, and exposed to 
privation, suffering, and want, by his studied and 
ingenious cruelty, an act which Gen. Hood in a 
letter to Sherman, said " transcends all acts ever 
brought to his notice in the history of war."" Being 
in the midst of an hostile country, and without a 
base of supplies, the Confederates considered that 
the time had come " to strike the greatest blow for 
their deliverance that had been dealt by the Con- 
federate armies since the war began." An effective 
blow, therefore, was to be given to the Federal 
army which should make a signal example of them 
for their temerity to all coming time, but the code 
of tactics which Gen. Sherman adopted com- 
pletely bewildered and defeated them ; and also 
made desolate the country through which he passed 
and left many of the Southern cities a heap of 
smoking ruins. Driven to a game of chances, and 
entirely subject to the force of circumstances, he 



620 THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 



marched his army through South Carolina in two 
columns towards the sea-board, laying under tribute 
the resources of the country through which he and 
his army passed, creating the wildest consternation 
amongst the people by their rioting amidst a 
carnival of destructiveness, destroying often by the 
torch of the incendiary what the hand of the spoiler 
could not appropriate or turn to profitable or useful 
account. The Confederates, therefore, were at a 
loss to conceive by Gen. Sherman's double move 
what place he would try to reach first, and as many 
important places were threatened at the same time, 
they had to divide their forces to try to keep him 
in check, which rendered them powerless and help- 
less. When they sought to impede one column in 
its advance the other was always near enough to 
concentrate, should a large force threaten either. 
The greatest difficulties of Sherman were in the 
neighbourhood of great rivers, whose sedgy oozy 
banks were flooded for miles with dismal swamps. 

Across these swamps and rivers Sherman's 
columns had either to build roads, or to advance on 
a single causeway barely sufficient for four men 
abreast, whilst the head of it in many cases was 
strongly guarded and entrenched. 

In a speech made by Wendell Phillips, Esq., at 
Boston, January 26th, 1865, we learn that one of 
these causeways is associated with one of the most 
infamous acts that ever disgraced a nation or 
people. Phillips says, " Gen. Sherman paused at 



THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 621 

the end of a causeway a mile long, let the white 
men pass, and held back the negroes, who had 
brought him horses, food, and information ; he then 
tore up the bridge and stood by while the rebel 
cavalry shot down that mass of friends as they 
would a herd of buffaloes." In his onward march, 
General Sherman destroyed the network of railroads 
which connected Charleston with Richmond, 
Augusta, Columbia, and other important places. 
This caused the evacuation of Charleston, and 
rendered of no avail in a military point of view 
other strongholds of the Confederates. Meanwhile 
the flames of destruction curled upwards in Sher- 
man's pathway, extending over a length of four 
hundred and fifty and covering a breadth of thirty- 
five or forty miles. This is what the New York 
Herald calls " Scotching the Secession snake in its 
nest." " Hunting fire-eaters at home and burning 
them out of their dens ; " and then, without de- 
tailing these achievements, sums up these horrors of 
General Sherman as follows, " Fourteen cities, hun- 
dreds of miles of railroad, and thousands of bales of 
cotton burned." One of the correspondents of a New 
York newspaper writes, "During the first part of 
the march houses were burned as they were found. 
Whenever a view could be had from high ground, 
black columns of smoke could be seen for a 
circuit. Solid chimneys were the only relics of 
plantation houses after the fearful blast had swept 
by. The destruction was almost universal. 



622 THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

Refugeeing was taken as an evidence that the 
refugees were rebels and the property was destroyed. 
Think of this black swath extending from Barn- 
well to the coast, and figure upon it the value of 
South Carolina at the present day. Even the 
negroes were wary ; afraid in some instances to 
trust themselves amongst the men who made this 
fearful work on the country. White table-cloths 
were suspended from the windows with ' Have 
mercy on me ' for a legend , and the fiery spirit 
of South Carolina was tamed effectually." 

The Richmond papers publish the following cor- 
respondence between Generals Sherman and Wade 
Hampton, which shews conclusively that the " fiery 
spirits " of the Southerns cannot be " tamed " by 
a process like the above : — 

" Head-quarters, Military Division of the Mississippi. 
In the Field, Feb. 24th, 1865. 

" Lieutenant General Wade Hampton commanding 
cavalry force C. S. A. 

" General, — It is officially reported to me that 
our foraging parties are murdered after capture, and 
labelled ' Death to all foragers.' One instance of a 
lieutenant and seven men near Chesterfield, and 
another of 20 men near a ravine 80 rods from the 
main road, about three miles from Feasterbille. I 
have ordered a similar number of prisoners in out- 
hands to be disposed of in like manner. 

"I hold about 1000 prisoners captured in 
various ways, and can stand it as long as you ; but 



THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 623 

I hardly think these murders are committed with 
your knowledge, and would suggest that you give 
notice to the people at large that every life taken 
by them simply results in the death of one of your 
Confederates. 

" Of course you cannot question my right to 
forage on the country. It is a war right as old as 
history. The manner of exercising it varies with 
circumstances, and if the civil authorities will 
supply my requisitions I will forbid all foraging. 
But I find no civil authorities who can respond to 
calls for forage or provisions, and therefore must 
collect directly of the people. I have no doubt 
this is the occasion of much misbehaviour on the 
part of our men, but I cannot permit an enemy to 
judge or punish with wholesale murder. 

"Personally I regret the bitter feelings engendered 
by this war ; but they were to be expected, and I 
simply allege that those who struck the first blow 
and made war inevitably ought not in fairness 
to reproach us for the natural consequences. I 
simply assert our war right to forage, and my resolve 
to protect my foragers to the extent of life for life. 
— I am, with respect, your obedient servant, 

tc W. T. Sherman, Major General, U.S.A." 

" Head-quarters in the Field, 
Feb. 27, 1865. 
" Major General W. T. Sherman, U.S. Army. 

"General, — your communication of the 24th inst. 
reached me to-day. In it you state that it has 



624; THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 

been officially reported that your foraging parties 
were ' murdered ' after capture, and you go on to 
say that you had ordered ' a similar number of 
prisoners to be disposed of in like manner.' That 
is to say, you have ordered a number of Confederate 
soldiers to be 'murdered.' 

"You characterise your order in proper terms, 
for the public voice even in your own country, 
where it seldom dares to express itself in vindica- 
tion of truth, honour, or justice, will surely agree 
with you in pronouncing you guilty of murder if 
your order is carried out. Before dismissing this 
portion of your letter I beg to assure you that for 
every soldier of mine ' murdered ' by you, I shall 
have executed at once two of yours, giving, in all 
cases, preference to any officers who may be in my 
hands. 

" In reference to the statement you made re- 
garding the death of your foragers, I have only to 
say that I know nothing of it ; that no order given 
by me authorised the killing of prisoners after 
capture, and I do not believe that my men killed 
any of yours except under circumstances in which 
it was perfectly legitimate and proper that they 
should kill them. 

" It is a part of the system of the thieves, whom 
you designate as your foragers, to fire the dwellings 
of those citizens whom they have robbed. To 
check this inhuman system, which is justly exe- 
crated by every civilised nation, I have directed my 



THE MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 625 



men to shoot down all of your men who are caught 
burning houses. This order shall remain in force as 
long as you disgrace the profession of arms by 
allowing your men to destroy private dwellings. 

" You say that I cannot question your right to 
forage on the country. 'It is a right as old as 
history/ I do not, sir, question this right. But 
there is a right older even than this, and one more 
inalienable — the right that every man has to defend 
his home, and to protect those who are dependent 
upon him ; and from my heart I wish that every 
man and boy of our country, who could fire a gun, 
would shoot down as he would a wild beast, the 
men who are desolating their land, burning their 
houses, and insulting their women. 

"You are particular in defining and claiming 
' war rights.' May I ask if you enumerate among 
them the right to fire upon a defenceless city with- 
out notice? — to burn that city to the ground after it 
had been surrendered by the authorities, who claimed, 
though in vain, that protection which is always 
accorded in civilized warfare to non-combatants? 
— to fire the dwellings of citizens after robbing 
them, and to perpetrate even darker crimes than 
these — crimes too black to be mentioned. 

"You have permitted, if you have not ordered, 
the commission of these offences against humanity 
and the rules of war. You fired into the city of 
Columbia without a word of warning. After its 
surrender by the mayor, who demanded protection 
2 R 



620 THE EASTERN MILITARY DIVISION. 



to private property, you laid the whole city in ashes, 
leaving amid its ruins thousands of old men and 
helpless women and children who are likely to perish 
of starvation and exposure. Your line of march 
can be traced by the lurid light of burning houses, 
and in more than one household there is an agony 
far more bitter than that of death. 

"The Indians scalped his victims regardless of 
age or sex ; but with all his barbarity he always 
respected the persons of his female captives. Your 
soldiers, more savage than the Indian, insult those 
whose natural protectors are absent. 

"In conclusion, I have only to request that 
whenever you have any of my men ' disposed of/ 
or 'murdered,' for the terms appear to be synony- 
mous with you, you will let me hear of it, in order 
that I may know what action to take in the matter. 
In the meantime I shall hold 56 of your men as 
hostages for those whom you have ordered to be 
executed. — I am yours, &c, 

" Wade Hampton, Lieutenant General." 

THE EASTERN MILITARY DIVISION, OR THE FEDERAL 
CAMPAIGN IN SI&RGLak^^, 

In this department of military enterprise the in- 
vasion of the South commenced, but we put it last 
because the decisive victory was gained by the Fe- 
derals over the South in the last battle which was 
fought by General Grant with General Lee at 



SOUTHERN UNIONISTS. 



627 



Petersburg!), which caused him to evacuate Rich- 
mond. This department has been a severe school 
of discipline to Northern armies, government and 
people. 

SOUTHERN UNIONISTS. 

When the grand army of the North entered 
Virginia, European nations and governments were 
gravely informed in a memorable despatch, issued 
by Secretary Seward, that the subjugation of 
the South formed no part of their plans or 
intentions, that the attempt would be wicked 
and inconsistent with republican institutions and 
government. The one grand object which was 
to absorb their attention, and concentrate their 
energies, according to the above named official, 
was, "to deliver a unionist people from the 
toils of a factious and despotic minority." Since 
then, curtain after curtain has fallen in the tragedial 
scenes of the war, but no unionists have been found 
in the South amongst the white people, with the 
exception of a few solitary, isolated cases, such as 
Barbara Frietchie, and " Andy Johnson " so called, 
recently made vice-president of the United States. 
The pluck and daring of Barbara for the Federal 
flag, won the admiration of Stonewall Jackson, and 
called forth his respect for her grey hairs. General 
Lee with his brave army had crossed the mountains 
which overlooked Fredericktown, where Federal 



628 



SOUTHERN UNIONISTS. 



flags with their " silver stars and golden bars " had 
flapped in the morning wind, but had all disap- 
peared on the approach of the Confederates. The 
following incident then took place, which has been 
so graphically described by Whittier, the " Federal 
Military Quaker Peace Poet." 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, 
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten 
Bravest of all in Frederick-town, 
She took up the flag the men hauled down j 
In her attic-window the staff she set, 
To show that one heart was loyal yet- 
Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. 
Under his slouched hat left and right 
He glanced : the old flag met his sight. 
" Halt !" — the dust-brown ranks stood fast. 
" Fire ! " — out blazed the rifle-blast. 
It shivered the window, pane and sash ; 
It rent the banner with seam and gash. 
Quick as it fell from the broken staff 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf ; 
She leaned far out on the window-sill, 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 
"Shoot, if you must this gray old head, 
But spare your country's flag," she said. 
The nobler nature within him stirred, 
To life at that woman's deed and word ; 
" Who touches a hair of yon gray head 
Dies like a dog ! March on ! " he said. 



The case of " Andy Johnson," now President 
of the Union, is not quite so creditable to the 



SOUTHERN UNIONISTS. 



629 



Federals as that of " Dame Barbara Frietcliie." 
At his recent inauguration, this distinguished 
American Vice-President shewed that he was all 
the worse for " liquoring up," and made the assem- 
bled crowd of senators, legislators, diplomatists 
and civilians hang down their heads and blush for 
shame. On Mr. Hamlin taking his official farewell 
of the body over whose deliberations he had pre- 
sided for the last four years, he concluded by intro- 
ducing his successor, the Hon. Andrew Johnson of 
Tenessee, Vice-President elect. All eyes being 
turned on Mr. Johnson as he rose from his chair, 
and with wild gesticulations and shrieks strangely 
intermingled with audible stage whispers, began to 
address the auditory around and above him. " I 
am going for to tell yeoo here to-day, yes, I am 
going for to tell yeoo all that I am a plebeian. I 
glory in it. I am a plebeian. The people, yes, the 
people of the United States ; the great people have 
made me what I am ; and I am a-going for to tell 
yeoo here to-day, yes to-day, in this place, that the 
people are everything. We owe all to them. If 
it be not too presumptuous, I will tell the foreign 
ministers sitting there, that I am one of the people. 
I will say to senators and others before me, I will 
say to the Supreme Court which sits before me, 
that you all get yeoor power and place from the 
people ; and Mr. Chase yeoor position depends on 
the people, and "yeoom? Mr. Stanton, and "yeoorn" 
Mr. Secretary ." Here he hesitated for a name, 



630 



SOUTHEEN UNIONISTS. 



but bending down to Mr. Hamlin, he asked him 
who was the Secretary of the navy, and on receiving 
the requisite information he continued, "And to 
yeoo, Secretary Wells, yeoo derive your power from 
the people." During the delivery of the above 
address, he alternately whispered and roared in a 
manner that it would have been ludicrous, if it had 
not been disgusting. He had not uttered two sen- 
tences when every person saw that something was 
wrong. "He is drunk," said one. "He is crazy," 
cried another. "This is disgraceful/' exclaimed a 
third. The members of the Cabinet looked on the 
ground or moved uneasily in their seats. The 
judges of the Supreme Court shewed pain and sur- 
prise. All were bewildered and astonished, but 
"Andy" was so proud of the dignity into which 
the people had thrust him, that he boasted of it in 
the language of a clown, and the manners of a 
costermonger. 

With the exception, therefore, of a few isolated 
cases like the above, the Federal armies have found 
nothing in front, and left nothing behind them but 
what they call "rebels." Even in Louisiana and 
South Carolina where the Federal flag waves, 
Wendell Phillips Esq. says, " there is not a loyal 
man amongst the whites." This discovery makes 
the astounding declaration of Seward vanish into 
"airy nothingness," calls down upon him the bitterest 
invectives, and subjects him to the most blasting 
irony and scorn. 



EFFECT OF BULL'S RUN. 



631 



EFFECTS OF BULL RUN AND M'CLELLAN'S DISASTERS. 

The disgrace which covered the Federal arms at 
Bull Run, and the terrible diasters which befel the 
Grand Army under General M'Clellan, brought a 
hurricane storm of reproach from the " War Chris- 
tians" against the administrators of the Federal 
government, who avowed " the whole cause of their 
disasters to be in their continued complicity with 
the crime of human slavery." 

In a memorial adopted by the " War Christians " 
Dec. 22, 1862, and sent to Washington, the memo- 
rialists say, — 

" Had we withdrawn ourselves from that compli- 
city, by obeying the command of God at the out- 
set, the justice and mercy of heaven were pledged 
for our protection and success, the Divine frown 
would have been upon our enemies, we would have 
secured the blessing of God, and commanded the 
sympathy and respect of all nations. 

" But the moment we ourselves re-entered into 
complicity with the very wickedness which was the 
foundation of the rebellion, we threw away the 
immense superiority of our moral position, de- 
scended to a level with that of the rebels, deprived 
ourselves of the possibility of appealing, as our 
fatlers did in the war of the Revolution, to the 
Jucge of all the earth for the justice of our cause 
and the rectitude of our intentions ; and went so 
far is to inform foreign nations that no moral prin- 



632 



THE FEDERAL MAGICAL ROD. 



ciple was involved in our quarrel, and that the 
position of every state and all persons should be the 
same as before. This announcement was sufficient 
to set both God and man against us. 

" We chose war without emancipation, and God 
gave us our request with disaster and defeat as the 
consequence. We have ourselves deliberately built 
up and prolonged the confederate treason, by the 
determination to avoid striking at its cause. We 
have provoked the indignation and challenged the 
avenging justice of the Almighty, by resolving 
that we would not decree the deliverance of the 
enslaved till this measure should become a necessity 
indispensable to the existence of our own govern- 
ment." 

When the Union "as it was" mask or cover 
adopted by the administrators at Washington failed 
them, another was adopted which was to produce 
marvels. 



THE FEDERAL MAGICAL ROD. 

* This was the proclamation of freedom. "G<>d," 
said the advocates of the Federal cause : — " Godjhad 
put an instrument into their hands which w^uld 
shoot out the heart of rebellion, and call up a new 
Union party from the vasty depths of the South, 
that would pronounce ten thousand blessings on 
their names, and make the South reflect almosjthe 
hues of paradise." Never were there such responsi- 



Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. 633 



bilities resting on one man before since time began, 
according to the above theorists. "0 that he would 
take this rod, and in the exercise of his prerogative 
stretch it over the land \" " But," said Lincoln, " it 
will only be like a Pope's Bull against a comet." 
Surprised at his apathy and unconcern, or con- 
founded stupidity and obstinacy when so much was 
in his power, long pilgrimages were undertaken to 
Washington to try to rouse him from his stupor, or 
make the scales fall from his eyes. Generals Hunter 
and Fremont tried to rob him of his glory, which 
he claimed belonged solely to the functions of his 
office as Commander in Chief of the Federal armies, 
consequently he suppressed the order of Hunter, and 
dismissed Fremont for his audacity and imperti- 
nence. At length the scales fell from his vision, 
or, waking up suddenly like a man who had been 
in a trance, he took the matter in hand, and waved 
his Federal magical rod — or, in other words, issued 
his proclamation. 

president Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. 

The following is the full text of President 
Lincoln's proclamation : — 

By the President of the United States of America. 

A PROCLAMATION. 

"Whereas on the twenty-second day of September, 
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred 



634 Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. 



and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the 
President of the United States, containing among 
other things, the following, to wit : — 

" That, on the first day of January, in the year * 
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
three, all persons held as slaves within any State, 
or designated part of a State, the people whereof 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, 
shall be then, thenceforth, and for ever free, and the 
Executive Government of the United States, in- 
cluding the military and naval authority thereof, 
will recognise and maintain the freedom of such 
persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such 
persons, or any of them in any effort they may 
make for their actual freedom. 

"That the Executive will, on the first day of 
January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the 
States and parts of States, if any, in which the 
people therein respectively shall then be in rebellion 
against the United States ; and the fact that any 
State or the people thereof shall on that day be in 
good faith represented in the Congress of the 
United States by members chosen thereto at elections 
wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such 
State shall have participated, shall, in the absence 
of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed con- 
clusive evidence that such State and the people 
thereof are not then in rebellion against the United 
States." 

Now, 'therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of 



Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. 635 

the United States, by virtue of the power in me 
vested as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy 
of the United States, in time of actual armed 
rebellion against the authority and Government of 
the United States, and as a fit and necessary war 
measure for suppressing said rebellion, do on this 
first day of January in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in 
accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly pro- 
claimed for the full period of one hundred days from 
the day of the first above mentioned order, and 
designate as the States and parts of States wherein 
the people thereof respectively are this day in 
rebellion against the United States, the following, 
to wit : — 

Arkansas. 

Texas. 

Louisiana. — except the parishes of St. Bernard, 
Placquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. 
Charles, St. James, Ascension, As- 
sumption, Terre Bone, Lafourche, St. 
Mary, St Martin and Orleans, includ- 
ing the city of New Orleans. 

Mississippi. 

Alabama. 

Florida. 

Georgia. 

South Carolina. 

North Carolina, and 

Virginia — except the forty-eight counties, desig- 



636 Lincoln's emancipation peoclamation. 



nated as West Virginia, and also the 
counties of Berkeley, Accomac, North- 
ampton, Elizabeth City, York, Prin- 
cess Ann, and Norfolk, including the 
the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, 
and which accepted parts are, for the 
present, left precisely as if this pro- 
clamation were not issued. 
And, by virtue of the power and for the purpose 
aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons 
held as slaves within said designated States and 
parts of States are and henceforward shall be 
free ; and that the Executive Government of the 
United States, including the military and naval 
authorities thereof, will recognise and maintain the 
freedom of said persons. 

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared 
to be free to abstain from all violence unless in 
necessary self-defence ; and I recommend to them 
that in all cases, when allowed, they labour faith- 
fully for reasonable wages. 

And I further declare and make known that 
such persons, of suitable condition, will be received 
into the armed service of the United States, to gar- 
rison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and 
to man vessels of all sorts in said service. 

And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of 
justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon mili- 
tary necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment 
of mankind and the gracious favour of Almighty 
God. 



Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. 637 



In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand 
and caused the seal of the United States to be 
affixed. 

Done at the city of Washington, this first day of 
January, in the year of our Lord, one thou- 
sand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the 
independence of the United States of America, 
the eighty- seventh. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

By the President — 

William H. Seward, Secretary of State. 

Such a proclamation from the great " Big Sove- 
reign " who was to swallow up all the little 
" State sovereigns " was a " nine days' wonder." 
Young and old, rich and poor, high and low, learned 
and illiterate, devoured its contents and discussed 
its merits. Some were e]ated with joy ; others 
were disappointed and looked on it with sovereign 
pity and contempt. A first there was a ground 
swell of complacency and delight, not only with 
the assumption of his extraordinary powers, but 
the exercise of them ; this, however, was only of 
short duration, as the conjuror's trick soon became 
manifest. The discovery that the proclamation 
was issued not as a righteous and noble act, but as 
a mere act of vengeance, in association with a new 
mode of warfare to be used as a brutum fulmen to 
the so-called " disloyal " slaveholder, but as a shield 
to protect the " loyal " ones, turned our modern 



038 ENLISTMENT OF THE NEGRO. 



" Moses " into a butt or target to be shot at, as 
the object of the worlds merriment and scorn. 
On the strength of it, however, the violent parti- 
sans of the war raised the cry higher and higher 
that the " South was fighting for slavery and the 
North against it ;" but as the mass of the Northern 
people declared that they were fighting for the 
Union and not for the negro, even so the South 
shewed that it cared but little for slavery, whilst it 
was mainly and chiefly anxious for its independence. 
This unmasked the Jesuitical policy of the Federal 
administrators, and as General Lee and the late 
Stonewall Jackson took off the wheels of the North- 
ern war chariots, and made them drag heavily, the 
Federal administrators were coppelled to adopt 
another move to cover their real object in the 
war, and to try to compass their wicked aims or 
designs. 

THE ENLISTMENT AND IMPRESSMENT OF THE NEGRO. 

This was the next move ; and, as Ave had already 
predicted years before, and published to the world, 
it brought its counter-move in the adoption by the 
Southerners of freedom as the basis of their inde- 
pendence, as shown in the united resolve of the 
governors of the Confederate States, the decree of 
both houses of the Southern Congress, the tele- 
gram of General Grant, that " General Lee had 
picketed in front of his army coloured soldiers who 



ENLISTMENT OF THE NEGEO. 



639 



were formerly slaves/' and in the affirmation of 
Wendell Phillips, Esq., that " if Jefferson Davis kept 
his saddle, he would continue the war, free every 
black, and give him a patent of nobility before he 
would yield to the Yankee." This latter move, 
however, was too late to be of any service to the 
Southerns. 

By Federal advocates we are informed that this 
scheme not only shows their determination to win 
their independence, but also their desperation. We 
are gravely informed "that the ruined gambler, 
who, having staked his last farthing, pulls the ring 
off his finger and the pin from his neck tie to 
pledge them upon the fatal table, proves not only 
his resolution to ^in, but the terrible straits to 
which he is brought by his losses. We may be 
sure he would not part with these while there was 
a solitary piece of gold or silver left in his purse, 
or to be begged or borrowed from his friends. So, 
too, with the South. It is in the position of a 
ruined gambler. It has thrown and lost. Time 
after time it has put down its stake, and time after 
time it has seen it swept away into the remorseless 
bank. State after state has been invaded, fortress 
after fortress has been lost, army after army has 
dwindled away before the ever recurring attacks of 
the Federal forces, and now it has nothing more to 
risk save one desperate stake. Those negroes whom 
it has so abused ; those negroes whom it has mas- 
sacred wherever it has found them in arms ; those 



640 ENLISTMENT OF THE NEGRO. 



negroes whom it has refused to recognise as sol- 
diers, and whose officers it has publicly declared to 
be liable to an ignominious death wherever they 
were captured ; those negroes who fly to the Fede- 
ral camp wherever the flag of the Union is reared, 
are to be mustered in camp and trained to fight 
for the salvation of their masters and the degrada- 
tion of their race. Is it possible to imagine a posi- 
tion of more utter humiliation, a more helpless 
confession of weakness, a more abject abdication of 
dignity and honour V Yes, special pleaders, this 
is possible, and more than probable when twenty 
millions of Northern white men who have spurned 
the negro from their embrace and treated him like 
a dog ; nay, more, have taken ^he lion's share of 
the profit that has been derived from the crime of 
slavery, and maintained intact their partnership in 
its tremendous guilt with the Southern people, and 
even now are only making the attempt in the fourth 
year of the war to amend the Constitution, so as 
to cast out what they call the " slave clauses." 
When twenty millions who have grown fat out of 
the spoils and plunder of such a nefarious system, 
and ground the negro to powder under their heels, 
and looked down upon him with haughty and con- 
temptuous disdain, saying, Stand by, for I am 
whiter than you. When twenty millions go down 
upon their knees in the presence of eight millions 
of their former copartners in guilt and shame, the 
whole world looking on, and in that abject posture 



GOD AND THE NEGRO. 



641 



are the first and' foremost to beseech the negro, 
nay, to compel him to come and help them, who 
are the largest party, to thrash the Southerns, who 
are the smaller one, in their death-grapple with them 
for refusing to hold to their part of the bargain, 
whilst the Northern people break theirs. How 
" weak in the knees, unsound in the heart, milk- 
white in the liver, and soft in the head," to 
use the language of a Federal writer, when twenty 
millions are reduced to the terrible strait, in the 
presence of six millions, of issuing the following 
flaming manifesto from the pen of the Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher : — 



GOD AND THE NEGRO. 

"The interval between the destruction and the 
salvation of the Republic is measured by two steps 
— one is emancipation, the other is military success. 
The first is taken, the other delays. How is it to 
be achieved? There is but one answer — by the 
negro ! 

" They (the negroes) are the forlorn hope of the 
Republic. They are the last safe-keepers of the 
good cause. We must make alliance with them, or 
our final success is imperilled. 

" Congress is in a dispute over a Bill to arm and 
equip 150,000 negroes to serve in the war. Let 
it stop the debate ! The case is settled ; the 
problem solved ; the argument is done. Let the 
2 s 



642 



GOD AND THE NEGRO. 



recruiting sergeants beat their drums ! The next 
levy of troops must not be made in the North, but 
on the plantations. Marshall them into lines by- 
regiments and brigades ! The men that have picked 
cotton, must now pick flint ! Gather the great 
third army ! For two years Government has been 
searching in an enemy's country for a path for 
victory, — only the negro can find it ! Give him a 
a gun and bayonet, and let him point the way ! The 
future is fair, — God and the negro are to save the 
'Republic." 

What a confession of utter helplessness and 
hopelessness in their own resources and ability ! 
God and the negro are to save the Republic! 
Negroes are the forlorn hope of the Republic ! 
The safe-keepers of the good cause ! We must 
make alliance with them, or our final success is 
imperilled ! Are these the men that Lincoln said 
" must not be permitted to five with white men, 
and must go to live somewhere else V Yes. How 
humiliating ! Are these the men whom Lincoln asked 
to turn against their masters, and fire their hate 
against them, and when he had attained peace pro- 
posed to hand them back *to their political power 
without a single element to shield themselves 
from the vindictive spirit sure to be aroused 
against those who have abandoned their master's 
cause? Yes. Are these the men who were 
enlisted and conscripted into the Federal army 
under the promise of equal compensation and pro- 



MILITARY JUGGERNAUT IN MOTION. 643 



tection the same as white soldiers, and made to 
carry the ladder of forlorn hope as at Petersburg ; 
and yet swindled out of their pay, and abandoned 
to their fate as prisoners of war ? Yes. This is not 
only humiliating, but infamous. 

It has been said that the world has written 
" Repudiator " on the forehead of Jefferson Davis, 
the head of the Confederacy, for repudiating the 
debts of the state of Mississippi. " Even so," says 
Wendell Phillips, Esq., " history will write repudia- 
tor on the forehead of the United States for 
repudiating a debt infinitely more binding, the debt 
of honour to the men whom it had covered with its 
uniform, and summoned to its side with halters round 
their necks and then deserted.'' 

MILITARY JUGGERNAUT IN MOTION. 

Whilst these changes were made by the admini- 
strators of the Federal government fierce and furious, 
desperate, and bloody battles were fought at 
Antietam, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania. Although 
the odds were largely against the Confederates, 
both in supplies of men, food, mechanical resources, 
ammunition, and money, yet they went into battle 
under the eye of the ablest General the war has pro- 
duced, and fought with a desperation and valour 
that despoiled rights and burning homesteads only 
coulc^ create. 

Sometimes victory perched on the eagles of Ge- 



644 



MISERIES OF WAR. 



neral Lee, and then again on those of his opponent, 
neither army being able to follow up the advan- 
tages gained by the other, either from exhaustion, 
or from the sable mantle of night concealing the 
victors and vanquished from each other, whilst the 
light of returning day found the defeated army 
behind new entrenchments thrown up with the 
spade, or far away from the field of battle on the 
march to take a new position, or fall back on some 
stronghold previously prepared. Meanwhile mul- 
titudes of the slain lay unburied, and the wounded 
were weltering in their blood. 



MISERIES OF WAR. 

An able writer has recently said, that " Those 
who are unacquainted with the horrors of war can- 
not realise the fearful sufferings which it entails on 
mankind. They read of it in papers and books, 
. gilded over with all its false glare and strange fas- 
cinations as a splendid game of glorious battles and 
triumphs, but close their eyes to its fearful horrors. 
The battlefield to them is a field of honour — a field 
of glory where men resign their lives amidst the 
joys of conquest which hallow the soldier's gory 
couch, and light up his death-features with a smile." 
This sounds well in heroic fiction, but how different 
the reality. Take, for instance, the battle of Spot- 
sylvania, where the Federals lost ten thousand men 
in killed and wounded, On the morning of the 



MISERIES OF WAR. 



645 



battle, General Lee and his army were entrenched 
behind a number of breastworks. An assault was 
made on their position, when the storming party 
rushed over the ramparts and drove the Confede- 
rates for a mile, when they rallied, and made five 
successive and fierce assaults to retake their lose 
position ; and so terrific was the death-grapple, that 
at different times of the day, the Confederate colours 
were planted on one side of the works and the 
Federals' on the other, the men fighting across the 
parapet. In the whole war it has been said that 
nothing has exceeded the savage desperation of this 
struggle ; and an eye-witness writes, that the scene 
of the conflict at the close presented such a spectacle 
of horror, that the exclamation of every man who 
beheld it was, " God forbid that I should ever gaze 
upon such a sight again." At one angle of the 
works the dead and wounded lay literally in piles 
— friend and foe together in the agonies of death, 
groaning beneath the dead bodies of their comrades, 
who had literally been torn to shreds by hundreds 
of balls, or thrust through and through in their 
bodies with the bayonet. Could fireside heroes 
have witnessed the abovenamed battlefield, with its 
bruised and mangled bodies, its dying and wounded, 
writhing in agonising tortures ; or witness the poor 
victims under the surgeon's knife, with the field 
hospital clotted with human gore, and full of the 
maimed bodies and dissected limbs of their fellow- 
creatures, war would lose its false charms, and be 



646 



MISERIES OF WAR. 



sfcript of its tinsel or glory. How fearful to con- 
template scenes like the above ; and yet, war has 
horrors greater than the battlefield presents. The 
death wound is mercy compared to the slow torture 
of lying on the damp cold ground, or in the dreary 
wards of the hospital, uncared for and unpitied, 
without one kind hand to stay the welling blood, 
or wipe the death-damp from the brow, or of 
lingering in prisons, — those charnel-houses of slow 
putrefaction, where pale, and spiritless, the pri- 
soners of war gasp and groan away their lives in 
hopeless misery. Could the tender mother see her 
darling child amidst such scenes as those, and under 
such circumstances, how her heart would break in one 
wild wail of anguish." And then think of the sacked 
and burned city; think of helpless women and 
children fleeing in terror before the devouring ele- 
ments, without a home to shelter them, without 
bread to feed them ; think of the widows and or- 
phans that water their scant bread with the tears of 
sorrow ; think of all the sufferings, misery, ruin, 
death, war entails on mankind, and you will curse 
its authors and wish that God had otherwise chas- 
tised His people. Though war may enrich the Shy- 
lock shoddies, paymasters, contractors, and specula- 
tive politicians, who sport gorgeous equipages and 
rich palaces out of the blood of their countrymen, 
it crushes the people under its wheels, like the car 
of Juggernaut, and oppresses the millions with tax- 
ation. 



THE FEDERAL POSITION. 



647 



THE THIRD GREAT ARMY OF FEDERALS. 

This was gathered from amongst the negro popu- 
lation and sent to reinforce General Grant, who, 
with the aid of General Sheridan and his division 
from the valley of the Shenandoah, turned the de- 
cisive victory of the campaign in his favour at 
Petersburg, which caused General Lee to evacuate 
Richmond, sounded the death knell to Southern 
hopes of success, and dried up their sources of 
comfort in the historical parallel already given. 

THE FEDERAL POSITION. 

The Herald's army correspondent writing from 
before Petersburg on April 2, says : — Although 
severe fighting has taken place on the extreme left 
of our line nearly the whole of the past week, yet 
the 6 th corps was ready when the word " move " 
went forth, and nobly has it sustained the confi- 
dence reposed in it by General Grant. Before giv- 
ing a detailed account of the important operations 
of to-day, it will be necessary to explain the posi- 
tion held by the rebels before the attack. Our 
line of entrenchments, forts, and batteries runs from 
the Appomattox river in a circular form to within 
about two miles of the South Side railroad, on the 
north side of Petersburg. The line is then re- 
versed, and runs back for a considerable distance, 
forming what is known as our rear line. At the 



648 



THE PLAN OF ATTACK. 



angle where the line is reversed we have a heavy 
fort called Fort Welch. To the right of this is 
a still heavier fort, called Fort Fisher. The line 
at this point is almost a straight one for some 
distance. 

THE PLAN OF ATTACK. 

The main rebel line was about three-quarters of 
a mile off, and in front of it there were two en- 
trenched picket lines. One of these we took from 
them last Saturday, and from what was learned on 
that occasion, General Wright felt convinced that 
by massing a strong body of troops under cover of 
night, a breach could be made and the South Side 
railroad reached. The plan was laid before the 
commanding generals, who took the matter into 
consideration, and had it acted on at daybreak this 
morning. The object Generals Grant and Meade 
had in view on giving their concurrence to the plan 
was twofold. The first was to create a diversion 
in favour of General Sheridan ; and secondly, to cut 
the rebel army in two and destroy the far-famed 
South Side railroad. All these were, of course, but 
subordinate parts of one grand plan to crush the re- 
bellion. Our first notice of the intended movement 
was received about ten o'clock last night. General 
Meade directed that, for the purpose of further faci- 
litating the operations of General Sheridan, the 6 th 
corps should be massed at four o'clock this morning 



THE PLAN OF ATTACK. 



649 



opposite the left angle of our works, and charge over 
the rebel line. The batteries on our entire front 
were ordered to open immediately on the rebels. 
For several hours our guns were pouring solid shot 
and shell into the rebel works, and they made but 
a feeble response to this unusual demonstration on 
our part. The picket lines in front of the different 
divisions were also ordered to advance and feel the 
enemy's strength ; but it did not succeed in annoy- 
ing them very much, and, in some instances, the 
rebels showed how far they were from suspecting 
any serious demonstration on our part by calling 
out to know whether we were celebrating All Fools 
Day in that noisy manner. The order given for 
the assault was carried out punctually at four 
o'clock. The troops were formed en echelon by 
divisions, the first being on the right, the second 
in the centre, and the third on the left. Owing to 
the fact that the greater the surprise the greater 
would be our chances of success, the troops began 
to move outside the works by about two o'clock. 
The moon had gone down, and the night was an 
intensely dark one. A thin chilly mist arose from 
the ground, which served still further to conceal 
our movements from the enemy. The result proved 
that the attack was a complete surprise to the 
enemy. The troops were formed and in position 
by half-past three, and no disturbance had awak- 
ened the suspicions of the rebels in our front. In 
making the above formation it was General Wright's 



> 



650 



THE ATTACK. 



idea to attack in such overwhelming numbers that 
failure would be impossible. Then when the column 
had made good its entrance into the rebel works, 
he believed that the divisions on the right and left 
might deploy in both these directions, and drive the 
enemy from their works almost as effectually as 
if a fresh corps had attacked simultaneously. To 
co-operate with this attacking column, General Parke 
was also to attack the rebels on the right, and 
General Ord was to do the same on the left, while 
Sheridan, far away to the left, was thundering on 
their flank. 



THE ATTACK. 

Suddenly, at four o'clock, a bright flash leaped 
out in the darkness from Fort Fisher, and the loud 
report from a twelve-pounder rolled on the air. A 
minute elapsed and a similar sound came from the 
right, some six miles away, telling that the signal 
was understood and the Ninth corps ready. Again 
a short space of time elapsed, and the sound of a 
score firing was heard. But this time it came from 
a score of pieces, not from a single gun. The shrill 
scream and sharp report of shells alternated with 
the savage whirring sound made by round shot 
from rifled pieces. The sounds crept gradually up 
from our right, and soon the sharp crack of muskets 
told that Getty's magnificent division had found 
and were pressing the rebels. The sounds increased 
in volume, and mingled with them were heard the 



THE ATTACK. 



651 



cheers of our men. General Wheaton had already- 
pushed his division forward, when from the rebel 
lines opposite Fort Welsh hostile batteries com- 
menced hurling shot and shell at random in the 
darkness, or having only the flashes of musketry to 
guide them. General Seymour, full of courage and 
chivalry, urged forward his veterans of the third 
division against these batteries, and then all was 
chaos, smoke, and darkness, pierced by innumer- 
able tongues of liquid fire, the thunder of artillery 
and the crack of musketry, mingling with which 
were the cheers of the combatants. Daylight 
dawned but slowly to the anxious spectators, whose 
hearts had however, already been relieved by 
noticing that one by one the rebel guns ceased fir- 
ing, and the musketry receded, while the cheering, 
often swelling up into one long and loud triumph- 
ant shout, died away. General Wright's assertion 
that he " would go through them like a knife" was 
fulfilled, for the main line of works was ours, 
together with hundreds of prisoners, numerous 
pieces of artillery, many battle flags, and other pro- 
perty. It was the most complete and triumphant 
achievement of the kind this war has witnessed, and 
the first rays of the morning sun fell on the flags 
of the divisions as they waved on the ramparts of 
the captured forts. It is probably a loose estimate 
when I state that this corps alone, since four o'clock 
this morning, captured 5000 prisoners and between 
twenty and thirty pieces of artillery. This decided 
the fate of Petersburg. 



652 CONFEDERATE ATTACK OX SHERIDAN. 



CONFEDERATE ATTACK ON SHERIDAN. 

A correspondent of the World, in narrating 
Sheridan's splendid achievements at Five Forks, 
which resulted in the capture of 6000 prisoners and 
the final victory, relates the following: — A rebel 
colonel, with a shattered regiment, came down upon 
us in a charge. The bayonets were fixed ; the men 
came on with a yell ; their grey uniforms seemed 
black amid the smoke ; their preserved colours, 
torn by grape and ball, waved defiantly. Twice 
they halted, and poured in volleys, but came on 
again like the surge from the fog, depleted, but 
determined ; yet, in the hot faces of the carbineers, 
they read a purpose as resolute, but more calm, and 
while they pressed along, swept all the while, by 
scathing volleys, a group of horsemen took them in 
flank. It was an awful moment : the horses re- 
coiled ; the charging column trembled like a single 
thing ; but at once the rebels, with rare organisa- 
tion, fell into a hollow square, and with solid sheets 
of steel defied our centaurs. The horsemen rode 
around them in vain; no charge could break the 
shining squares until our dismounted carbineers 
poured in their volleys afresh, making gaps in the 
spent ranks, and then in their wavering time the 
cavalry thundered down. 



CONFEDERATE REPULSE. 



653 



CONFEDERATE REPULSE. 

The rebels could stand no more ; they reeled and 
swayed, and fell back broken and beaten ; and on 
the ground their Colonel lay, sealing his devotion 
with his life. Through wood, and brake, and swamp, 
across field and trench, we pushed the fighting de- 
fenders steadily. For a part of the time Sheridan 
was there, short, and broad, and active, waving his 
hat, giving orders, seldom out of fire, but never 
stationary ; and close by fell the long, yellow locks 
of Custer, sabre extended, fighting like a Viking, 
though he was worn and haggard with much work. 
At four o'clock the rebels were behind their wooden 
walls at Five Forks, and still the cavalry pressed 
them hard, in feint rather than solemn effort, while 
a battalion dismounted charged squarely upon the 
face of their breastworks which lay in the main on 
the north side of the White Oak road. Then while 
the cavalry worked round toward the rear, the 
infantry of Warren, though commanded by Sheridan, 
prepared to take part in the battle. We were 
already on the rebel right in force and thinly in 
their rear. Our carbineers were making feint to 
charge in direct front, and our infantry, four deep, 
hemmed in their entire left. All this they did not 
for an instant note, so thorough was their confusion, 
but seeing it directly, they, so far from giving up, 
concentrated all their energy and fought like fiends. 
They had a battery in position, which belched in- 
cessantly down the breastworks ; their musketry 



654? 



sheridan's attack. 



made one unbroken roll, while Sheridan's prowlers 
on their left by skirmish and sortie, they stuck to 
their sinking fortunes so as to win unwilling 
applause from mouths of wisest censure. 

sheridan's attack. 

It was just at the coming up of the infantry that 
Sheridan's little band was pushed the hardest. At 
one time, indeed, they seemed about to undergo ex- 
termination ; not that they wavered, but that they 
were so vastly overpowered. It will remain to the 
latest time a matter of marvel, that so paltry a 
cavalry force could press back 1 6,000 infantry ; 
but when the infantry blew like a great barn door 
— the simile best applicable — upon the enemy's left, 
the victory that was to come had passed the region 
of strategy, and resolved to an affair of personal 
courage. We had met the enemy ; were they to 
be ours ? To expedite this consummation, every 
officer fought as if he were the forlorn hope. 
Mounted on his black pony, the same which he rode 
at Winchester, Sheridan galloped everywhere, his 
face flushed all the redder, and his plethoric but 
nervous figure all the more ubiquitous. He gal- 
loped once down to the rebel front with but an 
handful of his staff. A dozen bullets whistled for 
him together ; one grazed his arm, at which a 
faithful orderly rode, the black pony leaped high in 
fright, and Sheridan was untouched, but the orderly 
lay dead, and the saddle dashed afar empty. 



THE CONFEDERATE DEFEAT. 655 



THE CONFEDERATE DEFEAT. 

At seven o'clock the rebels came to the conclusion 
that they were outflanked and whipped. Wearied 
with persistent assaults in front, they fell back to 
the left, only to see four close lines of battle waiting 
to drive them off the field decimated. At the right 
the horsemen charged them in their vain attempt to 
fight out, and in the rear, struggling foot and 
cavalry began also to assemble. Slant and cross 
fire by file and volley rolled in perpetually, cutting 
down their bravest officers, and strewing the fields 
with bleeding men, and to add to their terror and 
despair, their own captured artillery threw grape 
and canister into their ranks, enfiladed their breast- 
works, and at last, bodies of cavalry fairly mounted 
their intrenchments and charged down the parapet, 
slashing and trampling them and producing inex- 
tricable confusion. They had no commanders, at 
least no orders, and looked in vain for some guiding 
hand to lead them out of a toil into which they had 
fallen so bravely and so blindly. A few more 
volleys, a new and irresistible charge, a shrill and 
warning command to die or surrender, and with a 
sudden and tearful impulse, five thousand muskets 
are flung upon the ground, and five thousand hot, 
exhausted, and impotent men are Sheridan's prisoners 
of war. 

Acting with his usual decision, Sheridan placed 
his captives in the care of a provost guard, and 



656 



REJOICINGS IN THE NORTH. 



sent them to the rear. Those who escaped, he 
ordered the fiery Custer to pursue with brand and 
vengeance, and they were pressed far into the forest, 
many falling by the way from wounds and exhaus- 
tion, others pressed down by hoof or sabre stroke, 
and many picked up in mercy and sent back to re- 
join their brethren in bonds. We captured in all 
fully six thousand prisoners. 

REJOICINGS AT WASHINGTON AND NEW YORK. 

The wildest enthusiasm prevailed at Washington 
and New York, on the receipt of the intelligence of 
the fall of Richmond. Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton 
both made speeches. The former said : — To Lord 
John Russell I will say, that British merchants will 
find cotton exported from our ports under treaty 
with the United States, cheaper than cotton obtained 
by running the blockade. As for Earl Russell, I 
need not tell him that this is a war for freedom and 
national independence, and not for empire, and that 
if Great Britain should only be just to the United 
States, Canada will remain undisturbed by us so 
long as she prefers the authority of the noble Queen 
to voluntary incorporation with the United States. 
(Cheers, and cries of ft That's the talk !") Secretary 
Stanton said : — In this great hour of triumph my 
heart, as well as yours, is penetrated with gratitude 
to Almighty God for his deliverance of the nation. 
(Tremendous cheering.) Let us humbly offer up 



REJOICINGS IN THE NORTH. 657 



our thanks to Divine Providence for His care over 
us, and beseech Him to guide and govern us in our 
duties hereafter, as He has carried us forward to 
victory ; to teach us how to be humble in the midst 
of triumph, how to be just in the hour of victory, 
and to help us to secure the foundations of this 
republic, soaked as they have been in blood, so 
that it shall live for ever and ever. (Enthusiastic 
cheers.) 

"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the 
strong," said an inspired writer in olden times ; 
and this holds good now, or the millions who have 
harnessed themselves to the war chariots of " Abe 
Lincoln " would long since have subjugated the 
South. At first, when the Federal hosts set out 
for Richmond, they believed that they had nothing 
to do but march straight on to their destination, 
never dreaming that a Confederate army would rise 
up in their pathway to strike terror to the centre 
of their hearts as they sent them back, again and 
again, quivering with fear towards Washington, and 
subjecting them to terrible disaster and mortifying 
defeat ; so that what they expected to achieve in a 
few days has taken as many years to accomplish. Of 
course unprecedented enthusiasm has filled our 
Northern cities, and the people have run riot in a 
carnival of joy over the fall of Richmond, a place 
now made famous in history like Charleston by 
its brave defenders. Had President Davis and the 
Confederate government adopted the counter- 
2 T 



658 REJOICINGS IN THE NORTH. 



move which we put on record in 1862, when we 
wrote the former part of this book, Southern 
generals and armies would not have been trampled 
down by superior numbers, or driven from one 
stronghold after another in consequence of the 
pressure of Northern armies, or the terrific strain 
on their resources which they have been called to 
endure. From the first we have freely avowed that 
Southern independence and slavery was impossible, 
but that if it was linked with the bright jewel of 
freedom to the slave, it was not only possible, but 
probable. In such a case, however, it required 
quickness to perceive it, and promptitude to embrace 
and act upon it, or the precious pearl of their in- 
dependence would be imperilled and their own 
vassalage secured. 

We trace all the fearful disasters which have be- 
fallen the South to their attempt to secure their 
independence with slavery as their black heritage, 
and to their delay in changing what was an element 
of weakness into one of colossal strength in their 
favour by the proclamation of freedom. Look at the 
relative position of the combatants., The North 
had not only twenty millions to six in the South, 
but the adult male population of Europe at their 
back to fill up their depleted ranks by the casualties 
of war, and quick to perceive that slavery was the 
weak point in the South, the Federal government 
resolved to break the shell of the Confederacy, if 
possible, at this point ; hence Lincoln's proclamation 



REJOICINGS IN THE NORTH. 



659 



of freedom, not as a measure of justice to the slave, 
but a brutum fulmen to punish the Confederates ; 
but as this measure only made them more fierce and 
furious, and led them to perform greater prodigies 
of valour, as well as to draw down upon the 
Federals the world's satire and scorn ; Frederick 
Douglas, the philanthropist so called, was made the 
head or chief of a new department for conscripting 
and enlisting negroes, and forming them into 
" Black Regiments " to help to turn the scales of 
victory in favour of the North. All this time no 
offset was attempted by the Confederate government 
until they were beset with appalling difficulties, 
and well-nigh overwhelmed with disasters, when an 
act was passed to arm the slaves on the basis of 
freedom from iron-handed necessity, which ought 
to have been done from joyous anticipation of 
coming events which cast their shadows beforehand. 
A paragraph is being freely circulated that this 
act contained a proviso that "the negroes were 
to be returned to their masters at the end of the 
war." This statement, however, breaks down 
under the weight of its absurdity, and shews to 
what a tremendous tension mendacious falsehood is 
stretched to draw upon the credulity of mankind, 
and make capital for the Federal cause. With the 
fall of Richmond the curtain has fallen on the 
closing scenes of the American war. Federal ad- 
vocates are shouting " the head and the backbone 
of the rebellion is smashed," the " Confederacy is 
at an end." 



660 



THE END OF THE WAR 



THE END OF THE WAR. 

The word victory is a powerful talisman to in- 
fluence all true soldiers on the field of battle, but 
the final victory on the termination of a long and 
perilous campaign, fills them with an enthusiasm 
and joy that knows no bounds. Federal advocates 
are now very busy, like the late Mr. Cobden prior 
to his death, laying tremendous stress on what he 
called " the unmistakeable signs of exhaustion " in 
the Confederacy, and on the prediction which he 
made that " the famous ninety days will witness 
very decisive events in the progress of the war," 
backed up with the plea that " if Lee was obliged 
to evacuate Richmond, there would not be a town left 
in the Confederacy with twenty thousand white 
inhabitants," and, consequently, not be able " to 
maintain permanently large armies in the interior 
of the Slave States amid scattered plantations and 
unpaved villages," as it requires the " base of large 
cities to concentrate the means of subsistence, and 
furnish the necessary equipment for an army." 

Federal telegrams, also, were actively employed in 
proclaiming to the world that the hour was at hand 
when they would consummate their final victory over 
the South, since General Grant, by the disposi- 
tion of his forces and vigorous pursuit of General 
Lee, had made it impossible for him to keep the 
field in the presence of such overwhelming num- 
bers. This was self-evident to General Sheridan, 



THE SURRENDER OF GENERAL LEE, 661 

as shewn in one of his telegrams. Hence the 
anxiety which was felt to obtain the intelligence, 
when the following despatch from the field of battle 
sealed the fate of the South : — 

SURRENDER OF GENERAL LEE. 

New York, April 11, Evening. 

Grant wrote to Lee on the 7th as follows : — 
'* The result of last week must convince you of the 
hopelessness of further resistance. I ask the sur- 
render of your army." 

Lee replied, that though not entirely of Grant's 
opinion of the hopelessness of further resistance, he 
reciprocated his desire to avoid the useless effusion 
of blood ; therefore, before considering Grant's pro- 
position, he asked what terms were offered for 
surrender. 

Grant replied that peace had been his first de- 
sire, and that he insisted upon only one condition 
— namely, that the men surrendered should be dis- 
qualified again to take up arms against the Govern- 
ment until properly exchanged. He would meet 
Lee or his representative at any point and arrange 
the surrender. 

Lee rejoined that he did not propose the surren- 
der of his army, but to ask the terms of Grant's 
proposition. He did not think the emergency had 
arisen to call fo^ surrender, but as the restoration 



662 



THE SURRENDER OF GENERAL LEE. 



of peace should be the sole object of all, he desired 
to know whether Grant's proposals would tend to 
that end. He, therefore, could not meet Grant with 
the view of surrendering his army, but as far as 
Grant's proposition might affect the forces under 
Lee's command and tend to restore peace Lee would 
be pleased to meet Grant. 

Grant replied, that having no authority to treat 
on the subject of peace, the meeting proposed by 
Lee could lead to no good. Grant expressed him- 
self equally desirous with Lee for peace, while the 
North entertained the same feeling. The terms 
upon which peace could be had were well under- 
stood by the South — by laying down their arms 
they would hasten peace, and save thousands of 
lives and millions of property. He hoped that all 
difficulties might be settled without the loss of an- 
other life. 

Lee replied, requesting an interview, in accord- 
ance with the offer contained in Grant's letter, in 
which it was stated that the men who surrendered 
should be disqualified to take up arms against the 
Government until exchanged. 

Grant then wrote to Lee on the 9th, proposing 
the following terms of surrender : — 

" The rolls of all officers and men to be made in 
duplicate, one copy for the officer designated by 
Grant, the other for the officer designated by Lee. 

" The officers to give their individual paroles not 
to take up arms against the Government until ex- 



GENERAL LEE'S FAREWELL ORDER. 663 

changed. Each company or regimental commander 
to sign a like parole for the men. 

" The arms, artillery, and public property to be 
parked and stacked and turned over to officers ap- 
pointed by Grant. This would not embrace the 
officers' side arms, private horses, or luggage. 

" Each officer and man to be allowed to return 
home, and not to be disturbed so long as they 
observe their parole and the laws in force where 
they reside." 

Lee accepted these terms on the same day. 

The officers and men were at once paroled and 
allowed to return home, the officers retaining their 
side arms. 

Correspondents estimate that Lee surrendered 
with 25,000 men. 

GENERAL LEE'S FAREWELL ORDER. 

General Lee, on the 1 0th inst., issued the follow- 
ing farewell order to his army: — 

After four years of arduous service, marked by 
unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the army of 
Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to 
overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not 
tell the brave survivors of so many hard-fought 
battles who have remained steadfast to the last, 
that I have consented to this result from no dis- 
trust in them, but feeling that valour and devotion 
could accomplish nothing that would compensate 



664 ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 



for the loss that would have attended a continuance 
of the contest, I have determined to avoid the use- 
less sacrifice of those whose past services have en- 
deared them to their countrymen. By the terms 
of the agreement, officers and men can return to 
their homes and remain until exchanged. You 
will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds 
from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, 
and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will ex- 
tend to you His blessing and protection. With 
unceasing admiration of your constancy and devo- 
tion to your country, and a grateful remembrance 
of your kind and generous consideration for myself, 
I bid you all an affectionate farewell. 

R E. Lee, General. 

ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 

Events crowd upon - us in rapid succession. 
Whilst a thrill of joy was passing through the 
hearts of Northern victors and their abettors and 
promoters in consequence of their great success, 
Abraham Lincoln has been sent, by the hand of an 
assassin, to a tribunal beyond the reach of human 
criticism, where the motives are scrutinised, as well 
as the actions of men, uninfluenced by rank or 
station, wealth or learning, and the reward is be- 
stowed on the principles of immutable equity, 
according to the deeds committed, whether good or 
bad. The destruction of life is a solemn, fearful 



ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 665 



act. The late Richard Cobden once said in the 
British House of Commons, that "no man was 
justified in taking away one human life, except he 
could restore it," what fearful guilt, therefore, must 
attach to those who sacrifice the lives of millions 
or abet them ? 

During the present war in America one million of 
lives has been destroyed, besides an immense mul- 
titude who have been made cripples, widows, and 
orphans ; but fearful and horrible as it is to con- 
template the scenes of battle and its direful results, 
assassination is a crime of the foulest character and 
deepest dye. 'Saddening and mournful as it may 
be to contemplate the scenes of war, the tragedies 
of the assassin not only outrage humanity, but shock 
the common sense of mankind. No fouler crime is 
chronicled in history than the murder which has 
just been committed at Washington. When the 
intelligence reached Liverpool, a tremendous rush 
took place to the " News Room " on the Exchange. 
All was deep and profound silence whilst the 
Secretary read the telegram, but as soon as he an- 
nounced the death of Lincoln, by an assassin, the 
feeling of horror which it created was general, with 
the exception of one dissentient, who had the tem- 
erity to shout " Hurrah." His presence in the 
room was of short duration. He was instantly 
seized by the collar, and summarily ejected by as 
strong a Southern as there is in Liverpool, who 
shouted in his ears, " Be off you incarnate fiend ! 



666 ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 



You are an assassin afc heart." The news is so sud- 
den and startling, that we can hardly bring our- 
selves to calmly reflect that he who "put his foot 
down" on the rights and powers of the sovereign 
states, and " pegged away " with his armies through 
seas of blood, that he might compel an unwilling 
obedience from the Southern States is now the 
victim of an assassin, and fills an untimely grave. 
There are those who elevate the late President 
Lincoln to the dignity of a martyr in the foul, de- 
testable, and cruel fate to which he has been sub- 
jected, exclaiming, " Upon death's purple altar now 
see where the victor martyr bleeds." No, not 
martyr but victim. He had suddenly wrenched 
the rights of millions from their hands ; and now 
he has succumbed to a fate which threatens all who 
are elevated to despotic power. 

Official Report. 

New Yokk, April 15th, 1865. 

The following official telegram from Mr. Secretary 
Stanton has been furnished by the United States 
Legation in London : — ^ 

Sir, — It has become my distressing duty to 
announce to you that last night his Excellency 
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, 
was assassinated, about the hour of half-past ten 
o'clock, in his private box, at Ford's Theatre, in 
this city. The President, about eight o'clock, 



ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 667 



accompanied Mrs Lincoln to the theatre. Another 
lady and gentlemen were with them in the box. 
About half-past ten, during a pause in the perform- 
ance, the assassin entered the box, the door of 
which was unguarded, hastily approached the 
President from behind and discharged a pistol at 
his head. The bullet entered the back of his 
head, and penetrated nearly through. The assas- 
san then leaped from the box upon the stage, 
brandishing a large knife or dagger, and exclaiming, 
" Sic semper tyrannis" and escaped in the rear of 
the theatre. Immediately upon the discharge the 
President fell to the floor insensible, and continued 
in that state until twenty minutes past seven 
o'clock this morning, when he breathed his last. 
About the same time the murder was being 
committed at the theatre another assassin pre- 
sented himself at the door of Mr. Seward's residence, 
gained admission by representing he had a prescrip- 
tion from Mr. Seward's physician, which he was 
directed to see administered, and hurried up to the 
third-storey chamber, where Mr. Seward was lying. 
He here discovered Mr. Frederick Seward, struck 
him over the head, inflicting several wounds, and 
fracturing the skull in two places, inflicting it is feared 
mortal wounds. He then rushed into the room 
where Mr. Seward was in bed, attended by a young 
daughter and a male nurse. The male attendant 
was stabbed through the lungs, and it is believed 
will die. The assassin then struck Mr. Seward with 



668 



ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 



a knife or dagger twice in the throat and twice in 
the face, inflicting terrible wounds. By this time 
Major Seward, eldest son of the secretary, and 
another attendant reached the room, and rushed to 
the rescue of the secretary; they were also wounded 
in the conflict, and the assassin escaped. No 
artery or important blood-vessel was severed by any 
of the wounds inflicted upon him, but he was for 
a long time insensible from the loss of blood. Some 
hope of his possible recovery is entertained. Im- 
mediately upon the death of the President notice 
was given to Vice-President Johnson, who happened 
to be in the city, and upon whom the oflice of 
President now devolves. He will take the office 
and assume the functions of President to-day. The 
murderer of the President has been discovered, and 
evidence obtained that these horrible crimes were 
committed in execution of a conspiracy deliberately 
planned, and set on foot by rebels under pretence 
of avenging the South and aiding the rebel cause ; 
but it is hoped that the immediate perpetrators will 
be caught. The feeling occasioned by these atrocious 
crimes is so great, sudden, and overwhelming, that 
I cannot at present do more than communicate 
them to you. At the earliest moment yesterday 
the President called a Cabinet meeting, at which 
General Grant was present. He was more cheerful 
and happy than I had ever seen him, rejoiced at the 
near prospect of firm and durable peace at home and 
abroad, manifested in marked degree the kindness 



THE ASSASSINS. 



669 



and humanity of his disposition, and the tender 
and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished 
him. Public notice had been given that he and 
General Grant would be present at the theatre, and 
the opportunity of adding the lieutenant-general to 
the number of victims to be murdered was no doubt 
seized for the fitting occasion of executing the plans 
that appear to have been in preparation for some 
weeks, but General Grant was compelled to be 
absent, and thus escaped the designs upon him. 
It is needless for me to say anything in regard of 
the influence which this atrocious murder of the 
President may exercise upon the affairs of this 
country ; but I will only add that, horrible as are 
the atrocities that have been resorted to by the 
enemies of the country, they are not likely in any 
degree to impair the public spirit or postpone the 
complete final overthrow of the rebellion. In profound 
grief for the events which it has become my duty 
to communicate to you, I have the honour to be 
very respectfully your obedient servant, 

Edwin M. Stanton. 

THE ASSASSINS. 

A man named Sura, of Maryland, who suddenly 
disappeared from his home at Washington, has beeir- 
suspected as being the assassin of Mr. Seward. 
The female members of his family were arrested on 
Monday night. While the officers were in the 



670 



THE ASSASSINS. 



house, a man disguised and covered with mud entered, 
and he was also seized. Upon being confronted by 
Major Seward and the domestics, he was recognised 
by them as the man who committed the assassina- 
tion. 

John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of Mr. Lincoln, 
is an actor, the son of Mr. J unius Brutus Booth, who 
failed in his attempt more than a quarter of a century 
ago to rival Edmund Kean as a tragedian. He has 
been one of the leading stars in the Northern States, 
where he has resided since the commencement of the 
war. His mother and the rest of the family reside 
at Baltimore. He has always been known to have 
" secesh " principles, but has hitherto borne an 
honourable character, and indeed was regarded 
everywhere as a young man of very superior 
abilities and bright prospects. It may be men- 
tioned that his brother, Edwin Booth, is one of the 
leading actors in New York. Some four or five 
years ago he was in London, and was well received. 
The only charge ever heretofore brought against 
John W. Booth was that of dissipation. He is of 
a slight build, but wiry and strong, and of prepos- 
sessing countenance. His connection with the stage 
would make him perfectly familiar with Ford's 
theatre, at which he has sometimes performed. In 
order to understand the manner in which the mur- 
der may have been effected, it is necessary to explain 
that the private box spoken of is close to one end 
of the stage, and raised about six feet above it. 



THE ASSASSINS. 



671 



Hence the assassin could quite easily enter the box, 
and having delivered the shot, leap on to the stage 
and thus make his escape. 

At a little after twelve o'clock on Friday last, 
John Wilkes Booth, by profession an actor, well 
and heretofore favourably known in our theatrical 
world, sauntered slowly into Ford's Theatre, in 
Frith-street, Washington, and engaged in desultory 
conversation with the box-keeper, with whom he 
was well acquainted. Incidently he learned that 
the President, with his family and one or two 
friends, would witness the play that evening from 
their box. After some further conversation, Booth 
withdrew and passed down the street to Pennsyl- 
vania-avenue, stopping at the Kirkwood House, 
at which hotel Andrew Johnson (now President) 
then occupied rooms. Entering the bar-room, he 
saluted one or two friends, and drank a glass of 
liquor ; then, proceeding to the office, he called for 
a card and a sheet of note paper. Standing at the 
counter he wrote upon the card these words : — 
" For Mr. Andrew Johnson : I don't wish to dis- 
turb you. Are you at home?" This message 
having been sent to Mr. Johnson, that gentleman 
returned word by the servant that he was very 
busily engaged, and could see no one at that time. 
Booth then passed around behind the counter, and 
seated himself at the clerk's desk — a familiarity 
frequently permitted on the part of persons intim- 
ately acquainted in and about our hotels. Here he 



672 



THE ASSASSINS. 



began writing, but bad indited but one or two 
words, when he turned to the clerk and said, " What 
year is it — 1864 or 1865 ?" After a moments 
pause he added, " I don't know actually." He was 
furnished with the desired information, and shortly 
after finished his letter, which he sealed with* great 
care. Then passing out again toward the street, he 
met one or two acquaintances, to whom he bowed 
in his usually courteous manner. Before leaving 
the hotel finally, however, he returned to the office 
and said to the clerk, " Are you going to Ford's to- 
night ? There'll be some splendid acting there ;" 
and receiving a negative answer, he slowly left the 
house. Going thence immediately to a well-known 
livery stable, he hired a very fast, handsome, strong 
bay mare, informing the proprietor that he would 
call for her toward night. Here all actual trace of 
him is temporarily lost, but with the information 
now at hand it is easy to conjecture, with almost 
absolute certainty, what his movements were. 
Leaving the livery stable he proceeded (without a 
doubt) to the theatre he had visited in the morning, 
and which was to be attended by the President at 
night. From his familiarity with the premises, he 
doubtless gained access to the auditorium and dress- 
circle over the stage, without difficulty. Passing 
from the dress-circle into the Presidential box, he 
first carefully removed the screws which held the 
spring-hasp of one of the doors, cutting out the 
thread made by the screws in the wood, and re- 



THE ASSASSINS. 673 

inserting them in their proper places. Thus he 
prepared the door, so that- a very slight push from 
the outside would force off the hasp and allow free 
ingress. . Going to the outer door of the narrow 
private passage way in the rear of the box, out of 
which passage way the two box doors opened, he 
made an indentation in the plaster of the wall suffi- 
ciently deep to admit the insertion of a small 
wooden bar, one end of which placed in this orifice 
and the other against the moulding of the door 
panel would prevent, for a time at any rate, any 
entrance from without. These affairs completed, 
Booth arranged the chairs in the box in such a way 
that the President at the right would sit with his 
head in a line with a certain point on the panel of 
the box door nearest the stage. He then left the 
theatre and returned to the livery stables, it being 
now about four o'clock, p.m. Here he took the 
mare which he had hired, and, mounting her, he 
rode up Fifteenth-street to Tenth, turning into an 
alley which led directly to the rear of the theatre. 
Fronting the alley is a small stable in which Booth 
had kept his own horse for several weeks, and in 
this stable he left the mare. From this time until 
after eight o'clock in the evening he passed the time 
in sauntering from bar-room to bar-room, drinking 
frequently. The last time he appeared in this way 
was in a drinking shop near the theatre, which he 
entered in company with three or four unknown 
persons. After imbibing, each member of the party 
2 u 



674 



THE ASSASSINS. 



shook hands with Booth and then with, each other, 
each bidding the other "good bye" in a formal and 
impressive manner. 

Let us now turn for a few moments to the exe- 
cutive mansion. In one of the parlours were Mr. 
and Mrs. Lincoln, Speaker Colfax, Miss Harris, and 
Major Rathbone. General Grant had promised to 
join the party at the theatre, but having finally 
decided to go to Burlington, he left for that city, in 
company with his wife, during the afternoon. The 
Presidential carriage was in waiting, and Mrs. Lin- 
coln, speaking to her husband, in a half-jesting, half- 
serious manner, said, " Well, Mr Lincoln, are you 
going with me or not V The President turned to 
Mr. Colfax (whose visit was of a purely private 
nature), and answered to him, " I suppose I shall 
have to go, Colfax ;" upon which the latter gentle- 
man departed, and the Presidential party was shortly 
afterwards driven to the theatre. At the door he 
met Booth, between whom and himself the usual 
salutation passed. Entering the box, the President 
took his seat in the chair designed for his use, and 
peculiarly located by Booth, occupying the outer 
corner of the box most remote from the stage. To 
his left sat Mrs Lincoln ; next her, and nearest the 
stage, Miss Harris ; in the rear of all, Major Rath- 
bone. The box, which was lined with crimson 
paper, and contained a sofa covered with crimson 
velvet, three armed chairs covered in like manner, 
and six common cane-bottomed chairs, was curtained 



THE ASSASSINS. 



in front with two silken United States' flags, one 
of which, as will be hereafter seen, was destined to 
play no unimportant part in the fearful drama about 
to be enacted. When the Presidential party en- 
tered the box, the audience rose and cheered enthu- 
siastically, which compliment Mr. Lincoln returned 
by a bow. 

The curtain rose and the play began. Mr. Lin- 
coln paid considerable attention to the comedy 
enacted before him. This play, Our American 
Cousin, has enjoyed even greater success m England 
than in this country, owing to Mr Sothern's imper- 
sonation of Lord Dundreary. The actors improved 
the opportunity afforded them by the presence of 
Mr Lincoln, and interpolated many sentences, hav- 
ing a bearing upon recent events, or upon the 
peculiarities of the President. At several of these 
innovations — known in theatrical idiom as " gags " 
— Mr Lincoln laughed aifdibly, particularly at one 
introducing his favourite saying, " That reminds 
me of a little story." The President's countenance 
was peculiarly sombre during the greater part of 
the evening, however ; he seemed to be in deep 
thought, and once, without any apparent reason, he 
went to the rear of the box, and put on his over- 
coat. 

Booth entered the theatre at a little after eight 
o'clock, and passed into the dress circle. Here he 
remained, leaning against the wall, and occupying 
a secluded position during the whole of the first 



676 



THE ASSASSINS. 



act. Always famous for remarkable perfection in 
dress, lie was, upon this occasion, even more ele- 
gantly attired than usual. His eyes, it was noticed, 
wandered nervously about the house, and were 
frequently fixed upon the President's box. Just 
before the beginning of the second act he left the 
theatre, went to the stable in the rear of the build- 
ing, and saddled and bridled his horse, leading the 
animal to the stage-door, or door for the entrance 
of actors, and placed her in the charge of a young 
man employed in a subordinate capacity in the 
theatre. Then he returned to the dress circle, and 
began working his way through the crowd stand- 
ing in the rear of the seats in the dress circle to- 
ward the box, and his unconcealed nervousness, 
and the singular ghastliness of his countenancee at- 
tracted the attention of many persons in the body 
of the theatre. Slowly pushing forward, he had 
arrived within a few feet of the box doors, when 
the curtain rose on the third act. Here he halted 
for a while, waiting until the second scene of the 
act had opened, when he again advanced, and 
placing his knee against the outer door, at the same 
time pressing with his left hand, he pushed it open. 
At the same instant he was checked by the Presi- 
dent's servant, and to this person he said that he 
was a senator, visiting Mr. Lincoln by invitation. 
He did not tarry, however, but immediately entered 
the small passage or hallway, running behind the 
box, out of which the box doors open. He at once 



THE ASSASSINS. 



677 



placed the wooden bar, for the reception of which 
he had previously prepared, across the door of this 
hallway, thus effectually shutting out the servant 
and all others, and preventing chance intrusion. 
He then stepped into the box. He was at once 
confronted by Major Rathbone, who said, "Do you 
know upon whom you are intruding, sir?" Bow- 
ing gracefully, he retired, stepping back to the 
outer door of the box. Standing in this doorway, 
concealed from the audience, and unnoticed by 
the Presidential party, who supposed that he had 
entirely withdrawn, he discharged a pistol with his 
left hand, and without taking aim across the barrel. 
The ball from this pistol passed through the closed 
inner door of the box, the door nearest the stage, 
and in a direct line with that in which Booth 
stood, and struck Mr Lincoln on the left side of 
the head behind, on a line with and three inches 
from the left ear. The President's head immedi- 
ately dropped forward a little, the eyes closed, and 
he became at once unconscious. Booth sprang into 
the box, and as he did so, Major Rathbone grappled 
with him. The assassin immediately struck him 
with a knife, ripping open his right arm from elbow 
to shoulder. Dashing Rathbone aside, as he re- 
leased his hold, Booth, with one leap, mounted the 
outer railing of the box, passing between Mrs. Lin- 
coln and Miss Harris. With another leap he 
cleared the box and struck the floor of the stage. 
As he sprang from the box, his spurred heel caught 



678 



THE ASSASSINS. 



a fold in one of the canopying flags, by means of 
which the spur was wrenched off, and dropped on 
the floor beneath. The distance from the railing 
of the box to the floor of the stage is nine feet. 
As Booth struck the floor the shock was such as to 
throw him into crouching position, from which, 
however, he at once recovered himself. Swinging 
abound, so as to confront the audience, he shouted 
out, " sic semper tyrannis" and dashed across the 
stage to the passage way on the right, thence to the 
rear behind the scenes, overturning an actor and 
actress in his course, and thence through what is 
known as the stage-door to the alley in the rear of 
the theatre. From the box to the stage-door the 
distance is just 64 feet ; and it is estimated that 
not 3 seconds elapsed between the time of the 
firing of the shot and the time at which Booth 
reached the alley. Bushing into this alley, which 
runs at right angles with that in whieh is situated 
the stable, whence he had left his horse, he took the 
animal from the boy in whose charge he had but 
a few minutes previously left it, and, mounting it, 
dashed off into the darkness. From that moment 
to the present no trace of him has been found, so 
far as the public can discover. 

For a full minute after the firing of the shot, 
silence reigned in the house. Those who saw the 
sudden da$h of the assassin, and heard his excla- 
mation, supposed it, at first, either a part of the 
play or the antic of a drunken man. But the 



THE ASSASSINS. 



679 



screams of Mrs. Lincoln and Miss Harris, and the 
cries of Major Rathbone for assistance, announced 
the fatal truth that the President of the United 
States had been murdered. Then a general rush 
to the doors took place ; but when the pursuers 
reached the rear of the theatre, Booth had disap- * 
peared, and not even the sound of his retreating- 
horse's hoofs struck upon their ears. The excite- 
ment which sprang up there surged over the whole 
continent before daybreak, and the scene in Wash- 
ington during the remainder of that bloody night 
was indescribably fearful. With regard to that 
matter, however, it is not necessary to speak at 
present. 

The " leading lady " of the theatre, Miss Laura 
Keene, who stood at the side of the stage when 
Booth sprang from the box, as soon as the awful 
fact made itself known, proceeded to the fatal box, 
and endeavoured in vain to restore consciousness 
to the dying President. It was a strange spec- 
tacle — the head and the ruler of 30 millions of 
people lying insensible in the lap of an actress, 
the mingled brain and blood oozing out and stain- 
ing her gaudy robe. In a few minutes Mr. 
Lincoln's unconscious form was removed to a 
house across the street, and here the soul of the 
President took its final departure. The room to 
which Mr. Lincoln was taken is fifteen feet square, 
ordinarily furnished, the walls being hung with 
a few cheap lithographs and photographs. In an 



680 



THE ASSASSINS. 



adjoining room the members of Mr. Lincoln's 
family were in a short time gathered, and from 
time to time they passed into the death chamber 
to look upon the distorted features of the husband 
and father. Mrs. Lincoln several times fainted, 
and was borne out. Once she approached the 
bedside, and, embracing the insensible form of 
her husband exclaimed, " Live ! live ! if but for 
a moment to bless your children." Again, she 
accused herself of having tempted him to attend 
the theatre. Her agony was overpowering, and 
most distressing to the sympathizing friends 
gathered in that solemn chamber. No one in the 
room but showed the deepest signs of emotion ; 
the stern Secretary of war sobbed like a child, 
Cabinet Ministers and governors, generals, and 
secretaries wept in concert — no one found it 
possible to restrain tears at the woeful spectacle. 
During the whole night the intimate friends of the 
President were gathered about his bedside, and 
the attendant minister offered up frequent prayers 
for the dying man and the afflicted relatives. At 
22 minutes past seven the President breathed his 
last. At this moment were gathered about the 
blood-stained bed Captain Kobert Lincoln, Secre- 
taries Stanton, Usher, and Welles ; Attorney General 
Speed ; Postmaster General Dennison ; Assistant 
Secretary of the Treasury Field ; Judge Otto, 
General Meigs, General Halleck, Senator Sumner, 
Governor Oglesby, Mrs. and Miss Harris, and 



LETTER FROM LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN. 681 



several other well-known or official persons. At 
nine o'clock in the morning the remains were taken 
to the White House. 



LETTER FROM THE ASSASSIN OF MR. LINCOLN. 

The following letter from Wilkes Booth has been 
discovered. It was doubtless written sometime in 
the month of January last, and carefully sealed up 
in an envelope, directed thus — " J. Wilkes Booth." 
This package Booth left with his brother-in-law, 
Mr. J. S. Clarke, a resident of Philadelphia, asking 
Mr. Clarke to take good care of it, as it contained 
valuable oil stocks and bonds. The envelope has 
remained since January in the possession of Mr. 
Clarke, unopened, until the fearful tragedy hacl 
occurred in Washington. The brother-in-law of 
Mr. Booth then opened the package, in which he 
found some United States bonds, oil stocks, and 
this letter. Mr. Clarke gave the letter to the 
United States' Marshal Millward, who furnished a 
copy to the Philadelphia Press. It is as fol- 
lows : — 

" 1864. 

" My dear Sir, — You may use this as you think 
best. But as some may wish to know when, who, 
and why, and as I know not how to direct, I give 
it (in the words of your master) 



682 



LETTER FROM LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN. 



" 'To whom it may concern.' 

" Right or wrong, God judge me, not man. For 
be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure 
the larting condemnation of the North. 

" I love peace more than life. Have loved the 
Union beyond expression For four years have I 
waited, hoped, and prayed for the dark clouds to 
break, and for a restoration of our former sunshine. 
To wait longer would be a crime. All hope for 
peace is dead. My prayers have proved as idle as 
my hopes. God's will be done. I go to see and 
share the bitter end. 

" I have ever held the South were right. The 
very nomination of Abraham Lincoln four years 
ago, spoke plainly war — war upon Southern 
rights and institutions. His election proved it. 
* Await an overt act/ Yes, till you are bound and 
plundered. What folly ! The South were wise. 
Who thinks of argument and patience when the 
finger of his enemy presses on the trigger ? In a 
foreign war, I, too, could say, ' Country, right 
wrong.' But in a struggle such as ours (where the 
brother tries to pierce the brother s heart), for God's 
sake choose the right. When a country like this 
spurns justice from her side she forfeits the allegi- 
ance of every honest freeman, and should leave him 
untrammelled by any fealty soever to act as his 
conscience may approve. 

" People of the North, to hate tyranny, to love 



LETTER FROM LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN. 683 



liberty and justice, to strike at wrong and oppres- 
sion was the teaching of our fathers. The study of 
our early history will not let me forget it, and may 
it never. 

" This country was formed for the white, and not 
for the black man ; and looking upon African 
slavery from the same standpoint held by the noble 
framers of our Constitution, I, for one, have ever 
considered it one of the greatest blessings, both for 
themselves and us, that God ever bestowed upon a 
favoured nation. Witness heretofore our wealth 
and power; witness their elevation and enlight- 
ment, above their race elsewhere. I have lived 
among it most of my life, and have seen less harsh 
treatment from master to man than I have beheld 
in the North from father to son. Yet, heaven 
knows, no one would be willing to do more for the 
negro race than I, could I but see a way to still 
better their condition. 

" But Lincoln's policy is only preparing the way 
for their total annihilation. The South are not, 
nor have they been, fighting for the continuance 
of slavery. The first battle of Bull Run did away 
with that idea. Their causes since for war have 
been as noble and greater far than those that 
urged our fathers on. Even should we allow they 
were wrong at the beginning of this contest, cruelty 
and injustice have made the wrong become the 
right, and they stand now (before the wonder and 
admiration of the world) as a noble band of patri- 



684 LETTER FROM LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN. 

otic heroes. Hereafter, reading of their deeds, Ther- 
mopylae wiH be forgotten. 

" When I aided in the capture and execution of 
John Brown (who was a murderer on our western 
border, and who was fairly tried and convicted be- 
fore an impartial judge and jury of treason, and 
who, by the way, has since been made a god), I was 
proud of my little share in the transaction, for I 
deemed it my duty, and that I was helping our 
common country to perform an act of justice. But 
what was a crime in poor John Brown is now con- 
sidered, by themselves, as the greatest and only virtue 
of the whole Republican party. Strange transmi- 
gration ! Vice to become a virtue simply because 
more indulge in it. 

" I thought then, as now, that the Abolitionists 
were the only traitors in the land, and that the 
entire party deserved the same fate as poor old' 
Brown, not because they wished to abolish slavery, 
but on account of the means they have ever endea- 
voured to use to effect that abolition. If Brown 
were living I doubt whether he himself would set 
slavery against the Union. Most or many in the 
North do, and openly curse the Union, if the South 
are to return and retain a single right guaranteed 
to them by every tie which we once revered as 
sacred. The South can make no choice. It is 
either extermination or slavery for themselves 
(worse than death) to draw from. I know my 
choice. 



LETTER FROM LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN. 



685 



" I have also studied to discover upon what 
ground the right of a State to secede has been denied, 
when our very name, United States, and the Decla- 
ration of Independence both proved for secession. 
But there is no time for words. I write in haste. 
I know how foolish I shall be deemed for under- 
taking such a step as this, where, on the one side, 
I have many friends and everything to make me 
happy, where my profession alone has gained me an 
income of more than 20,000 dollars a year, and 
where my great personal ambition in my profession 
has such a great field for labour. On the other 
hand, the South has never bestowed upon me one 
kind word ; a place now where I have no friends, 
except beneath the sod; a place where I must 
either become a private soldier or a beggar. To 
give up all of the former for the latter, besides my 
mother and sisters, whom I love so dearly (although 
they so widely differ with me in opinion), seems 
insane ; but God is my judge. I love justice more 
than I do a country that disowns it, more than 
fame and wealth, more (Heaven pardon me if 
wrong) than a happy home. I have never been 
upon a battlefield, but oh ! my countrymen, could 
you all but see the reality or effects of this horrid 
war, as I have seen them in every State, save Vir- 
ginia, "I know you would think like me, and pray 
the Almighty to create in the Northern mind a sense 
of right and justice (even should it possess no 
seasoning of mercy), and that He would dry up the 



686 LETTER FROM LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN. 

sea of blood between us which is daily growing 
wider. Alas ! poor country, is she to meet her 
threatened doom ? Four years ago I would have 
given a thousand lives to see her remain as I had 
always known her — powerful and unbroken. And 
even now I would hold my life as naught to see 
her what she was. O ! my friends, if the fearful 
scenes of the past four years never had been enacted, 
or if what has been, had been but a frightful dream 
from which we could now awake, with what over- 
flowing hearts could we bless our God and pray for 
His continued favour ! How I have loved the old 
flag can never now be known. A few years .since, 
and the entire world could boast of none so pure 
and spotless. But I have of late been seeing and 
hearing of the bloody deeds of which she has been 
made the emblem, and would shudder to think how 
changed she had grown. Oh ! how I have longed 
to see her break from the mist of blood and death 
that circles round her folds, spoiling her beauty and 
tarnishing her honour. But no ; day by day she 
has been dragged deeper and deeper into cruelty 
and oppression, till now (in my eyes) her once bright 
red stripes look like bloody gashes on the face of 
heaven. I look now upon my early admiration of 
her glories as a dream. My love, (as things stand 
to-day), is for the South alone. Nor do I deem it 
a dishonour in attempting to make for her a 
prisoner of this man, to whom she owes so much 
misery. If success attend me, I go penniless to her 



WILKES BOOTH SHOT. 



687 



side. They say she has found that 'last ditch* 
which the North has so long derided, and been en- 
deavouring to force her in, forgetting they are our 
brothers, and that it is impolitic to goad an enemy 
to madness. Should I reach her in safety and find 
it true, I will proudly beg permission to triumph or 
die in that same ' ditch ' by her side. 

"A Confederate doing duty upon his own re- 
sponsibility. 

"J. Wilkes Booth." 

WILKES BOOTH SHOT. 

New York, April 28. 

Mr. Stanton reports to-day that Booth and Har- 
rold, his accomplice, were chased from a swamp in 
St Mary's County, Maryland, to Garrett's farm, near 
Port Royal, on the Rappahannock, by Colonel 
Baker's detectives. The barn in which they took 
refuge was fired. Booth was shot and killed. Har- 
rold are now at Washington. 

The following further particulars have been re- 
ceived. It appears that Booth and Harrold, dressed 
in Confederate uniforms, reached Garrett's farm 
several days ago. Booth was wounded. In con- 
versation he denounced Lincoln's assassination, and 
said that the rewards offered would doubtless be 
increased to half a million. The Garretts, when 
arrested, asserted that they did not suspect it was 
Booth. Canadian bills for a large amount were 



688 



ASSASSINS AND THE CONFEDERATES. 



found upon him. Harrold remains uncommunica- 
tive. 

Booth was shot through the head. He lingered 
for three hours. His foot also was injured, and he 
used crutches. The cavalry who surrounded the 
bard summoned Booth and Harrold to surrender. 
The latter seemed inclined to acquiesce, but Booth 
accused him of cowardice. After the barn was 
fired Harrold surrendered, but Booth shot at the 
cavalry serjeant, who returned the fire and killed 
him. It is supposed that Harrold is an accomplice 
of the assassin who attacked Seward. Dr. Mudd, 
of Maryland, set Booth's leg, and supplied him with 
crutches. Mudd has been arrested. 

ASSASSINS AND THE CONFEDERATES. 

Insinuations have been freely made use of that 
Southern "rebels" have conspired to take away Lin- 
coln's life. To such we commend the following 
article, from the Standard, April 27th, 1865. 

"The slanderous malignity of certain persons 
who, for obvious ends, would fasten the stigma of 
assassination upon the enemies who have so often, 
and so gallantly, met, and beaten the Federal armies 
on the Field of battle, is simply beneath rebuke or 
refutation. There is no nation in the world so 
perfectly free from the stain of murderous cowardice 
as the people of the Confederate States. Subjected, 
as they have been, to atrocities forbidden by the 



ASSASSINS AND THE CONFEDEKATES. 689 

common code of Christian nations ; having seen 
defenceless districts given up to pillage and outrage, 
unresisting cities fired, women systematically aban- 
doned to the licence of the soldiery, prisoners of war 
assassinated in cold blood, citizens butchered on 
their own thresholds by the invaders, they have 
never allowed themselves to be provoked to use the 
utmost rigours of warfare, far less to exceed them. 
The cruelties practised on Confederate prisoners 
have never, even when the exchange was suspended, 
been retaliated on the numerous captives in Con- 
federate prisons. Never have they even taken life 
for life. No Northern town has been burnt ; only 
once, by way of formal retribution for a thousand 
such crimes, some of the public buildings of 
Chambersburg were fired. No Northern woman 
has ever received the slightest affront from Confe- 
derate soldiers. The worst ruffians among Mr. Lin- 
coln's generals have never been in the least personal 
danger. Butler himself quitted New Orleans un- 
harmed and unthreatened, after refusing a challenge 
from a countryman of the ladies, to whom he 
had offered the foul and cowardly outrage which 
has affixed everlasting infamy to his name. We 
do not mean to say that it is impossible that some 
Southern hand may have mingled in the plot. 
Some husband or father, whose nearest and 
dearest have suffered the last indignity at the 
hands of Lincoln's soldiery ; some near relative 
of those who were butchered at Palmyra with the 
2 x 



690 ASSASSINS AND THE CONFEDERATES. 



sanction and approval of the commander-in-chief 
of all the Federal armies ; some dear friends of 
the gallant Captain Beal, so lately murdered by 
the immediate order of the President — may 
have been maddened by brooding over these 
wrongs into this criminal act of personal vengeance. 
But if the assassin was moved by merely political 
motives, it is quite as likely that he was not as that 
he was a Southern partisan. The person charged 
with this foul crime is the son of an Englishman, 
well known as an actor ; an actor himself as might 
have been supposed from the melo-dramatic air he 
assumed, and the familiarity with theatrical 
arrangements which facilitated perhaps his entrance 
and certainly his escape. If we are to judge by 
the fact that he appeared on the stage at New 
Orleans during the reign of Butler we must believe 
that he is no very earnest Secessionist. And the 
selection of the helpless Seward as the second victim 
— the useless murder of the member of the Cabinet 
least bittter in his hatred against the South — 
appears to suggest similar suspicions/' 

That these men were instruments in the hands of 
Southern leaders or people to assassinate Lincoln 
we hope and trust will be found to be without found- 
ation, since the manner in which they have demeaned 
themselves on the field of battle, and in connection 
wit the history of the war demonstrates that they are 
not a race of assassins, and consequently we feel per- 
suaded that the military chieftains and people will 



ASSASSINS AND THE CONFEDERATES. 691 

most earnestly and indignantly repudiate the grave 
charge of Secretary Stanton against the Southerns, 
who doubtless wrote his report under the first 
shock of the intelligence of the assassination of his 
chief, without much consideration, and upon imper- 
fect information. 

Mr. Mason, writing to the Index on the subject 
of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln says : — " As to 
the crime which has been committed, none will 
view it with more abhorrence than the people of 
the South, but they will know, as will equally all 
well balanced minds, that it is the necessary off- 
spring of those scenes of bloodshed and murder in 
every form of unbridled license which have signalised 
the invasion of the South by Northern armies, 
anrebuked certainly, and therefore instigated by 
their leaders and those over them." 

The following letter was written by Mr. Slideli, 
in reply to an invitation from the Rev. Archer 
Gurney, to attend a funeral service on account of 
the death of President Lincoln, in the Protestant 
church, Paris : — 

"Paris, April 28. 

" My dear Sir, — No one could have heard with 
greater horror and regret than I, the intelligence 
of the atrocious crimes perpetrated at Washington. 
No one could repudiate with sterner indignation 
the idea that the assassins had received prompting 
or encouragement from friends of the Confederate 



692 ASSASSINS AND THE CONFEDEEATES. 



cause. Perhaps no two prominent persons of the 
Federal government could have been selected who 
excited in a less degree feelings of personal hostility 
and vindictiveness than President Lincoln and his 
Secretary of State. I am much obliged to you for 
inviting me and my family to assist at the solemn 
service which you propose to hold to-morrow at 
your chapel, and could we be present simply to 
manifest the feelings which I have briefly expressed 
we would not hesitate. But reflection will, I am 
sure, satisfy you, that our presence on the melan- 
choly occasion would be subject to various and not 
unnatural misconstructions, received on the part of 
some as a hypocritical display of regret we did not 
feel, by others, as a virtual acknowledgment of the 
injustice of the cause in defence of which so many 
noble martyrs have fallen, and as a tacitly implied 
acquiescence in the course of policy pursued by Mr. 
Lincoln since his accession to power on the 4th of 
March, 1861. I will take pleasure in compliance 
with your request, to let any Confederate friends 
whom I may see to-day know of the intended 
ceremony. — Believe me, very sincerely, your friend 
and servant, John Slidell. 

No honourable Confederate attempts to palliate 
or excuse this crime, or to exult at its commission. 
When General Lee was informed of the murder he 
exclaimed " Horrible ! horrible !" refused to listen to 
the dreadful details, and shut himself up in his 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



693 



house. The Confederates confined at Richmond 
held meetings and adopted resolutions, in which they 
declared they were " soldiers, not assassins." 

On the basis of Stanton's report a popular cry of 
indignation has been aroused against the South, and 
a demand has been made for severe measures against 
the Confederates, which has led to the arrest of 
Judge Campbell and the Confederate officers on 
parole at Richmond, pending the investigation of 
the murder of Lincoln. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Lincoln's remains have been laid out in state at 
Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and in the 
principal cities through which they have been taken 
to his place of interment at Springfield, Illinois, 
the city where he spent the principal portion of his 
life. Many sketches have been given of his life. 
From these we learn that he was born in Hardin 
County, Kentucky, Feb. 12, 1809, in humble life, 
and when a child was removed with his father's 
family to Spencer County, Indiana. When a youth 
he was sent to school in a log cabin, where his 
limited opportunities were only sufficient to pick 
up the rudiments of a common education, and there- 
fore he was mainly indebted through life to his 
natural ability, shrewd foresight, adroitness, prompt- 
ness of action, self-confidence, and experience of 
men and things, which mark the " rough and ready" 



694 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

American. In 1830 he removed with his father to 
Decatur, Illinois, where he was engaged in building 
a log hut and splitting rails. Here he commenced 
life for himself, first as a field labourer, and then as 
a shopman. When the war with the Indians broke 
out in 1832, commonly called the Black Hawk 
War, he enlisted as a volunteer in the New Salem 
Company, and whilst engaged in fighting Black 
Hawk, Billy Bow Legs, or some other desperate 
Indian chief determined to defend their hunting 
grounds, he was raised to the rank of captain. 

When the war was over " Abe" returned to 
Springfield, the capital of Illinois, and in the follow- 
ing year became a candidate for a seat in the Legis- 
lature on Whig principles, but was unsuccessful. 
He then turned his attention in another direction, 
and became a storekeeper, with which he subse- 
quently combined the postmastership of Salem. He 
now resolved to try his hand at law, but studied it 
under great disadvantages, owing to his circum- 
stances, which rendered it impossible for him to 
procure the necessary supply of books for the 
purpose. 

In 1834 he succeeded in what had been the 
ambition of his maturer years, and obtained a seat 
in the Legislature, which he had the good fortune 
to hold for some four or five years ; securing his re- 
election on three or four separate occasions between 
that date and the year 1840. During this time he 
had been admitted as an advocate, and practised 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



695 



with some success at Springfield. He had now be- 
come an ardent politician, and when Henry Clay 
was a candidate for the Presidency Mr. Lincoln was 
one of his most enthusiastic supporters. In 1846 
he was returned to ^Congress, where he sat three 
years, voted for the Wilmot Proviso, and against 
territorial aggrandizement ; resisted Douglas, and 
opposed the Mexican war as unconstitutional. In 
1854, Mr. Lincoln was an unsuccessful candidate 
for Illinois. In 1856 he took an active part in 
supporting Fremont against Buchanan in the con- 
test for the Presidency. In 1858 he was the 
Kepublican candidate for Illinois for the U.S. Senate, 
but was defeated by Douglas. Two years later he 
was put forward by his party as the Kepublican 
candidate for the Presidentship ; and partly in con- 
sequence of divisions in the Democratic camp, and 
partly owing to the Vote of the Democratic State 
of Pennsylvania, secured by a prospective high 
tariff, he was elected in November, 1860, against 
such formidable rivals as Douglas, Breckenridge, and 
Bell. Mr. Lincoln polled a majority of votes in 
every Northern State except New Jersey ; but he 
did not receive a majority of the popular votes 
throughout the entire Union. He was thus elected 
President under the forms of the constitution, with 
a majority of nearly a million votes against him. 
Being the son of a working man, he commenced 
life as a rail splitter, and afterwards became a rafts- 
man, storekeeper, soldier, surveyor, farmer, lawyer, 



696 EULOGIUMS. 

legislator, and then the President of the United 
States. 

" Honour and shame from no condition rise 
Act well your part, 'tis there the honour lies." 

The lower a man's position and the higher he 
rises, and the more creditable to himself when his 
principles, character, and conduct, are worthy of 
himself. 

EULOGIUMS. 

, Deeply as we regret his violent death, we cannot 
unite with those who make him an apostle of free- 
dom or a martyr. In a former place we have 
placed before the reader the antagonistical positions 
which he assumed to himself in order to curry 
favour with opposing parties, and as desperately 
onesided efforts are now being made to claim for 
him an enviable as well as conspicuous place in 
history, we ask the reader to ponder over the fol- 
lowing paragraphs : — 



PEO AND CON. 

June 12th, 1858, Lincoln said: Aug. 2lst, 1858, Lincoln said: 

— " In my opinion, the slavery — " When I made my speech at 

agitation will not cease until a Springfield, of which Judge 

crisis shall have heen reached Douglas complains, I really was 

and passed. ' A house divided not thinking of the things he 

against itself cannot stand.' I ascribes to me at all. I had no 

believe this Government cannot thought in the world that I was 



PRO AND CON. 



697 



endure permanently half-slave 
and half-free. I do not expect 
the Union to be dissolved, I do 
not expect the house to fall ; hut 
I do expect it will cease to be 
divided. It will become all one 
thing or all the other. Either 
the opponents of slavery will 
arrest the further spread of it — 
place it where the public mind 
shall rest in the belief that it is 
in the course of ultimate extinc- 
tion — or its advocates will push 
it forward, till it shall become 
alike lawful in all the States, old 
as well as new, North as well as 
South." These words were 
spoken in 1858, and looking back 
over the seven years which have 
elapsed, we can appreciate the 
political foresight of the man. — 
Morning Star. 

April 27, 1865. The editor of 
the same paper says : — " On 
another occasion, after most 
eloquently urging that the 
authors of the Declaration of 
Independence meant its prin- 
ciples to apply to the whole great 
family of man, and that it was 
their belief that nothing stamped 
with the Divine image and like- 
ness was sent into the world to 
be trodden on, and degraded, 
and embruted by its fellows. 
He continued — 'You may do 
anything with me you choose, if 
you will but heed these sacred 
principles. You may not only 
defeat me for the Senate, but 
you may take me and put me to 
death. While pretending no in- 
difference to earthly honours, I 
do claim to be actuated in this 
contest by something higher 
than an anxiety for office. I 



doing anything to bring about 
a political and social equality of 
the black and white races. But 
I must say, in all fairness to him, 
if he thinks I am doing some- 
thing which leads to these bad 
results, it is none the better I 
did not mean it ; it is just as 
fatal to the country if I have 
any influence in producing it, 
whether I intend it or not." 



A few days after he raised the 
flag referred to, he surrendered 
the principle contained in that im- 
mortal emblem of humanity, the 
Declaration of Independence, as 
shewn in the following para- 
graph in his Inaugural Address, 
March 4, 1861, when he took the 
oaths of fidelity to the Union, 
and swore to protect, maintain, 
and defend the Constitution as 
a slave document. 

"There is much controversy 
about the delivering up of fugi- 
tive slaves from service or la- 
bour. The rendition clause is 
as plainly written as any other 
of its provisions. It is scarcely 
questioned that this provision 
was intended by those who made 
it for the reclaiming of what we 
call fugitive slaves. And the 
intention of the lawgiver is the 
law. All members of Congress 



698 



PRO AND COX. 



charge you to drop every paltry 
and insignificant thought for any 
man's success. It is nothing ; I 
am nothing; Judge Douglas is 
nothing. But do not destroy 
that immortal emblem of hu- 
manity. — the Declaration of 
AmericanIndependence."When 
raising a flag in Philadelphia, 
■when on his way to Washing- 
ton in 1861, he asked whether 
the Union could be saved upon 
the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and in answering his own 
question, uttered words which 
sound prophetically after the 
occurrence which has so troubled 
the country — "If this country 
cannot be saved without giving 
up that principle, I was about to 
say, 1 would rather be assassi- 
nated on this spot than surrender 
it " — and his last words on the 
occasion were — "I have said no- 
thing but what I am willing to 
live by, and, if it be the pleasure 
of Almighty God, die by." 

April, 27, 1865. The Morn- 
ing Star says — "Mr. Lincoln 
believed that slavery ought to 
be excluded from the territories, 
although he did not see his way 
to interfere with slavery in those 
States where it existed. He 
most happily thus described the 
difficulties of the position : — ' If, 
he said, ' I saw a venomous 
snake crawling in the road, any 
man would say I might seize the 
nearest stick and kill it ; but if 
I found that snake in bed with 
my children, it would be another 
question. I might hurt the 
children more than the snake, 
and the snake might bite them. 
But if there is a bed newly made 
up, to which the children are to 



swear to support the whole Con- 
stitution, and to this provision 
as much as any other. To the 
above proposition their oaths are 
unanimous," &c. 



In a speech made at Freeport, 
Illinois, August 27, 1858, Lin- 
coln said — " I should be glad to 
know there would never be an- 
other slave state admitted into 
the Union ; but I must add, that 
if slavery shall be kept out of 
the territories during the terri- 
torial existence of any one given 
territory, and then the people 
shall, having a fair chance, and 
a clear field when they shall 
come to adopt the Constitution, 
do such an extraordinary thing 
as to adopt a slave constitution, 
uninfluenced by the actual pre- 
sence of the institution among 
them, I see no alternative, if we 
own the country, but to admit 
them into the Union." 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON. 



699 



be taken, and it was proposed 
to take a batch of young snakes 
and put in with them, I take it 
no man would say there was a 
question how I ought to decide. 
That is just the case. The new 
territories are the newly made 
bed to which our children are to 
go, and it lies with the nation to 
say whether they shall have the 
snakes mixed up with them or 
not. It does not seem as if there 
could be much hesitation what 
our policy should be.'" 



At the outbreak of the war a 
Peace Convention met at Wash- 
ington under the sanction of Lin- 
coln, and offered all territory 
south of 36 deg. 30 min. to the 
Southern states and people for 
new slave states, if they would 
come back into the Union. 



Partisans in the presence of the above revelations 
may shout that Mr. Lincoln was the "vanguard of 
freedom, civilization and justice," and that "he 
stood by these principles during his life," referred 
to in the left hand column, and " completed the 
most triumphant defence of them when called to 
die but the paragraphs of Lincoln in the right 
hand colunm knock down the pedestal on which 
the admirers of Lincoln centre his fame, and wither 
every leaf in his so-called " chapter of glory." No 
greater satire can be put upon Lincoln than to 
maintain that "he was the martyr of justice or 
freedom's cause." 



PRESIDENT AlNDREW JOHNSON. 

Andrew Johnson was sworn in as President, by 
Chief Justice Chase, at eleven o'clock this morning. 
Secretary M'Cullock, Attorney General Speed, and 
others were present. 



700 



PEESIDENT JOHNSON. 



Johnson said — " The duties are at present mine. 
I shall perform them. The consequences are with 
God. Gentlemen, I shall lean upon you. I feel I 
shall need your support. I am deeply impressed 
with the solemnity of the occasion, and the respon- 
sibility of the duties of the office I am assuming." 

Andrew Johnson, a United States' senator from 
Tennessee, was born in Raleigh, N. Carolina, Decem- 
ber 29, 1808. When he was four years of age he 
lost his father, who died from the effect of exertions 
to save a friend from drowning. At the age of ten 
he was apprenticed to a tailor in his native city, 
with whom he served seven years. His mother 
was unable to afford him any educational advan- 
tages, and he never attended school a day in his 
life. While learning his trade, however, he resolved 
to make an effort to educate himself. By persever- 
ance he soon learned to read, and the hours which 
he devoted to his education were at night after he 
was through his daily labour upon the shop-board. 
He now applied himself to books from two fco three 
hours every night, after working from ten to twelve 
hours at his trade. Having completed his appren- 
ticeship in the autumn of 1824, he went to, Laurens 
Courthouse, South Carolina, where he worked as a 
journeyman for nearly two years. In May 1826 
he returned to Raleigh, where he remained until 
September. He then set out to seek his fortune 
in the West, carrying with him his mother, who 
was dependent upon him for support. He stopped 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON. 



701 



at Granville, Tennessee, and commenced work as a 
journeyman. He remained there about twelve 
months, married, and soon afterwards went still 
farther westward, but failing to find a suitable place 
to settle he returned to Granville and commenced 
business. Up to this time his education was 
limited to reading, as he had never had an oppor- 
tunity of learning to write or cipher, but under the 
instructions of his wife he learned these and other 
branches. The only time, however, he could devote 
to them was in the dead of the night. The first 
office which he ever held was that of alderman of 
the village, to which he was elected in 1828. He 
was re-elected to the same position in 1829, and 
again in 1830. In that year he was chosen mayor, 
which position he held for three years. In 1835 
he was elected to the Legislature. In 1840 he 
served as Presidential elector for the State at large 
on the Democratic ticket. He canvassed a large 
portion of the State, meeting upon the stump several 
of the leading Whig orators. In 1841 he was 
elected to the State Senate. In 1843 he was 
elected to Congress, where, by successive elections, 
he served until 1853. In 1853 he was elected 
Governor of Tennessee after an exciting canvass. He 
was re-elected in 1855 after an active contest. At 
the expiration of his second period as Governor, in 
1857, he was elected United States' senator for a 
full term, ending March 3, 1863. 

The following address is ominous from the new 
President : — 



702 



PEESIDENT JOHNSON. 



" No one can say that if the perpetrator of this 
fiendish deed be arrested, he should not undergo 
the extremest penalty the law knows for crime ; 
none will say that mercy should interpose. But is 
he alone guilty? Here, gentlemen, you perhaps 
expect me to present some indication of my future 
policy. One thing I will say. Every era teaches 
its lesson. The times we live in are not without 
instruction. The American people must be taught 
— if they do not already feel — that treason is a 
crime and must be punished — (applause) — that the 
Government will not always bear with its enemies ; 
that it is strong not only to protect, but to punish. 
(Applause.) When we turn to the criminal code 
and examine the catalogue of crimes, we there find 
arson laid down as a crime with its appropriate 
penalty ; we find there theft, and robbery, and 
murder given as crimes ; and there, too, we find 
the last and highest of crimes — treason. (Applause.) 
With other and inferior offences our people are 
familiar, but in our peaceful history treason has 
been almost unknown. The people must under- 
stand that it is the blackest of crimes, and will be 
surely punished. (Applause.) I make this allusion, 
not to excite the already exasperated feelings of the 
public, but to point out the principles of public jus- 
tice which should guide our action at this particular 
juncture, and which accord with sound public morals. 
Let it be engraven on every heart that treason is 
a crime, and traitors shall suffer its penalty. (Ap- 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON. 



703 



plause.) While we are appalled, overwhelmed at 
the fall of one man in our midst by the hand of a 
traitor, shall we allow men — I care not by what 
weapons — to attempt the life of the State with im- 
punity ? While we strain our minds to compre- 
hend the enormity of this assassination, shall we allow 
the nation to be assassinated? (Applause.) I speak in 
no spirit of unkindness. I leave the events of the 
future to be disposed of as they arise, regarding 
myself as the humble instrument of the American 
people. In this, as in all things, justice and judg- 
ment shall be determined by them. I do not har- 
bour bitter or revengeful feelings towards any. In 
general terms, I would say that public morals and 
public opinion should be established upon the sure 
and inflexible principles of justice. (Applause.) 
When the question of exercising mercy comes be- 
fore me, it will be considered calmly, judicially, 
remembering that I am the Executive of the nation. 
I know that men love to have their names spoken 
of in connection with acts of mercy, and how easy 
it is to yield to this impulse. But we must not 
forget that what may be mercy to the individual 
is cruelty to the State. The life of the sovereign 
states having been assassinated by the felon hands 
of Federal administrators, those who have sought to 
defend them are now to be assassinated in turn. 
Assassination, therefore, is to be the order of the 
day if President Johnson's views and wishes are to 
be carried out, but as such tremendous difficulties 



704 



PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 



lay before him in the reconstruction of the Union, 
we are of opinion that he will not add to them by 
political assassination and murder. 

PEACE NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN GENERAL SHERMAN 
AND GENERAL JOHNSTON, AND THEIR REPUDIA- 
TION BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 

A courier reached Washington on Friday, April 
21st, announcing that Sherman had agreed upon a 
temporary suspension of hostilities, and had arranged 
terms of peace on the 18th with Johnston, Brec- 
kenridge being present. A Cabinet meeting was 
immediately held. President Johnson, General 
Grant, and the Cabinet unanimously disapproved of 
Sherman's action, and ordered him to resume hos- 
tilities. Sherman was informed that Mr. Lincoln's 
instructions to Grant on the 3d March, had been to 
hold no conference with Lee, except as a preliminary 
to surrender, and these instructions were approved 
and reiterated by President Johnson to govern the 
action of the military commanders. Grant immedi- 
ately left for North Carolina to direct the operations 
against Johnston. The terms arranged between 
Johnston and Sherman, subject to the ratification of 
their respective Governments, were as follows : — . 
Forty-eight hours' notice to be given of the renewal 
of hostilities ; the Confederate armies to be dis- 
banded and deposit their arms and public property 
in the state capitals, and to be subject to the action 



PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 



705 



of the State and Federal authorities ; the Federal 
Executive to recognise the State Government ; the 
Supreme Court to decide upon the legitimacy of the 
conflicting State Governments caused by the war ; 
the Federal authorities to guarantee to the people 
civil and political rights so long ^s they obey the 
laws ; finally, a general amnesty to be proclaimed 
and the war to cease. 

The Federal Government disapproved of Sher- 
man's proceedings as an improper assumption of 
authority. His agreement, it was considered, 
practically acknowledged the Rebel Government, 
prevented confiscation and the punishment of rebels, 
and would enable the rebels to re-establish State 
Governments with slavery. It might also render 
the Government responsible for the rebel debt, 
formed no basis for a lasting peace, and would en- 
able the rebels to renew the war when their strength 
was recruited. 

Mr. Stanton apprehends that Sherman's suspen- 
sion of hostilities will enable Davis to escape to 
Mexico or Europe with the plunder of the Richmond 
banks and other accumulations. 

Sherman issued an order to his army on the 16th 
announcing the suspension of hostilities, and stating 
that the agreement with Johnston, when ratified, 
would make peace from the Potomac to the Rio 
Grande. He hoped soon to conduct the soldiers 
home. 

2 Y 



706 CHARACTER OF THE AGREEMENT. 



Memorandum on basis of agreement made this 
18th day of April 1865, near Durham's Station, 
and in the State of North Carolina, by and between 
General Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the Con- 
federate army, and Major-General Wm. T. Sherman, 
commanding the army of the United States in North 
Carolina, both present : — 

1. The contending armies now in the field to 
maintain their statu quo until notice is given by the 
commanding general of either one to its opponent, 
and reasonable time (say 48 hours) allowed. 

2. The Confederate armies now in existence to be 
disbanded and conducted to their several state capi- 
tals, there to deposit their arms and public property 
in the State arsenal, and each officer and man to 
execute and fill an agreement to cease from acts 
of war, and abide the action of both State and 
Federal authorities. The number of arms and mu- 
nitions of war to be reported to the Chief of Ord- 
nance at Washington city, and to be subject to 
future action of the Congress of the United States, 
and in the meantime to be used solely to maintain 
peace and order within the borders of the States 
respectively. 

3. The recognition by the executive of the 
United States of several state governments, on their 
officers and legislatures taking the oath proscribed 
by the constitution of the United States ; and where 
conflicting state governments have resulted from the 
war, the legitimacy of all shall be submitted to the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 



CHARACTER OF THE AGREEMENT. 707 



4. The re-establishment of all Federal courts in 
the several States with powers as defined by the 
constitution and laws of Congress. 

5. The people and inhabitants of all States to be 
guaranteed, so far as the Executive can, their poli- 
tical rights and franchise, as well as their rights of 
person and property, as defined by the constitution 
of the United States and of States respectively. 

6. The Executive authority of the Government 
of the United States not to disturb any of the people 
by reason of the late war, so long as they live in 
peace and quiet, and abstain from acts of armed 
hostility, and obey the laws in existence at any 
place of their residence. 

7. In general terms war to cease ; a general am- 
nesty, so far as the executive power of the United 
States can command, or on the condition of the 
disband onment of the Confederate armies, and the 
distribution of arms and resumption of peaceful 
pursuits by officers and others hitherto composing 
the said armies. Not being fully empowered by 
our respective principals to fulfil these terms, we 
individually and officially pledge ourselves to 
promptly obtain necessary authority, and to carry 
out the above programme. 

W. T. Sherman, Major-General Commanding 
the Army of the United States in North 
America. 

J. E. Johnston, General Commanding Confe- 
derate States Army in North Carolina. 



708 



THE UNITED STATES. 



THE UNITED STATES. 

These are now no longer sovereign States, but 
dependencies on the supreme power and will now 
established and centralised at Washington. The 
old Union has been revolutionised ; new elements 
of power have been introduced which will hence- 
forth subordinate the States' wheels to the great 
Federal Fly wheel which has been introduced into 
the machinery of Congress. We shall hear no 
more of the recognition of State sovereignties which 
were introduced into abolition programmes in olden 
times, and also flung in our faces by Democrats and 
Republicans with the most haughty and con- 
temptuous disdain, when we enunciated the great 
principles of freedom, as they exclaimed, " we have 
no slavery here in the Northern States. If you 
want it you must go South for it." Now the 
white population are vassals, and have a restric- 
tion put on the exercise of the wild license of their 
liberty, and will not be able to " do as they have a 
mind to." Nobly have the Southerns fought in 
defence of their ancient rights to govern themselves, 
but their Northern invaders outnumbered them, 
and trod them down under their black hoofs. If 
our Free Republic, so called, had been subject to 
biting sarcasm and blasting mockery and reproach 
before the war, how can it be regarded now, that 
millions of white men have been robbed of their 
God-given rights and liberties, under the vain and, 



THE UNITED STATES. 



709 



frivolous pretext of liberating the slave. Equality 
of right, prostituted in our entire history, to keep 
the negro race in subjection is now changed inot 
equality of might to hold the brutum fulmen over 
the whites who have sought to maintain sacred and 
intact their supreme rights of the sovereign States, 
as well as the constitutional theory that governors 
or civil rulers must have the "consent of the 
governed." Whatever changes may be experienced 
by any parties in the United States, or that may 
await us in the future, we cannot but hate the 
elements out of which the present revolution has 
sprung ; as well as the process through which oui 
Northern revolutionary chieftains have climbed to 
fame and glory, in order to make once Sovereign 
States bend to their arbitrary and despotic rule. 
Assuming that Southerns are hopelessly defeated, 
with M. Assolant, a distinguished Frenchman, we 
look upon the final triumph of the North as likely 
to be fatal to the liberty of the victors ; if not to 
many more precious lives. Both North and South 
were morally wrong. The South, however, was 
politically right ; and the same arguments which 
justified Americans in separating themselves from 
England in 1776, fully vindicated the conduct of 
the Southern people. Their most violent opponents 
claim the right of the Poles, Hungarians, and 
Italians to change their form of government ; but 
when the case of the South is concerned, these men 
run wild with ungovernable fury, and grow mad 



710 



THE UNITED STATES. 



with vulgar abuse in avowing that the "South has no 
rights which men are bound to respect." M. Emile 
Olivier has designated them " Les Incorrigibles." 
However this may be, history will pronounce the 
Southern people to be an ill used and persecuted 
race, for supposing that the members of the Con- 
vention who adopted and ratified the Constitution 
of the United States on the basis of being "one and 
inseparable," the descendants of these men are not 
bound by the compact which they entered into in 
1776; since the first principle or rudimentary 
maxim on which every convention, contract, or 
compact is made is, that no man is bound by any 
act or deed except what he has undertaken or 
covenanted to do of his own free will ; so that, as 
the contract of a father is not binding upon his 
children, even so the compact entered into by 
George Washington, J efferson and Co. in 1811^ 
was not binding on the Southern people or States, 
when they threw off their allegiance to the Federal 
government, and seceded from the Union at the 
commencement of the war. And when we come to 
consider that our Northern States and people have 
been the greatest sinners of the two, in the violation 
of the fundamental laws and principles of the 
Constitution, their crimes and guilt assume the 
form or colour of the deepest dye ; and of the most 
aggravated kind. 



CENTRALISATION OF POWER. 711 



DEVOLUTION THE DESTRUCTION OF THE OLD UNION. 

If the assumption that the South was for Union 
at heart, the proclamation of freedom, and the enlist- 
ment and conscription of the negro were on] y masks 
to cover ulterior objects, it becomes important to 
inquire into the object contemplated by these hollow 
pretexts ; the grand end and aim which the Federal 
administrators have kept steadily in view, and to 
which they have made all other things subservient 
in the prosecution of the present horrible war. This 
was simply and solely to grasp the reins of universal 
sovereignty in the States by the assumption of 
those extraordinary powers which are vested in a 
military dictatorship. 

CENTRALISATION OF POWER. 

This was the first step to be taken by the revolu- 
tionary chieftains in the accomplishment of their 
vast schemes of wickedness. Hitherto the Union 
had lain beyond the sphere of sovereignty ; but 
now it must be made the sovereign of all the 
sovereign States ; the sun in their system of 
government around which the different States like 
so many satellites must revolve, and to which they 
must pay obedience ; so that the President and 
Congress, from being conjointly the servants of all 
the States now assume to be their chief or master. 
" Tis ours to rule, yours to obey." 



712 



STATE-SOVEREIGNTY RIGHTS. 



This usurpation of right, privilege, or power was 
not only unconstitutional but revolutionary, and 
involved the destruction of the absolute sove- 
reignties of all the States which were the basis on 
which both the old " Confederation," and more 
"perfect Union " were formed, and constituted the 
safeguard or bulwark of American constitutional 
freedom. 

STATE-SOVEREIGNTY RIGHTS. 

These are traditionary in America, and have ever 
been guarded with jealous care. 

"In the history of the anti-slavery struggle, let 
us never forget," exclaims Wendell Phillips, " what 
it taught us of the limited authority and influence 
of the Federal government. In 1831 the strongest 
power of the nation grappled with the State of 
Georgia and was defeated. Georgia seized a con- 
verted Cherokee in 1831, and said, I will hang him. 
Chief Justice Marshall said, "you cannot, it is 
unconstitutional." Orthodoxy rallied from Massa- 
chusetts Bay to the Mississippi, and said you shall 
not. It is infamous. Where is there a stronger 
power than the orthodox sects of the North for an 
army, and the Supreme Court for a General ? Con- 
gress denied the legality of the proceeding. The 
press of the country, ignorant and exultant, said, 
it cannot be done. See if it can't, said Georgia, and 
hung him up. Then they took Samuel Worcester 



STATE-SOVEREIGNTY RIGHTS. 



713 



and put him in jail. Behind him stood the 
American Board for Foreign and Domestic Missions. 
In front of him the chief justice, but Georgia turned 
the key on him, and there he lay until in her 
sovereign will she chose to open it." 

South Carolina took our black seamen out of 
ships and put them in jail. Winthrop was lifted 
to manhood enough to prove that it was illegal. The 
Secretary of State said it was unconstitutional. 
Massachusetts protested. Congress did the same. 
We sent Samuel Hoar to say, "Wayward sister, why 
do you so % Go home, or I will put you in, was the 
answer." Texas took six of our black men and sold 
them ten years ago, and we do not know where 
they are to-day. Unconstitutional a]l of it. Public 
opinion on our side largely at the North, but Con- 
gress said, "we know of no means by which to 
check a State." This history might be extended 
to the Northern States, also, to shew the limited 
authority and influence of the Federal government, 
and their utter inability to restrain the powers of 
the States, or to prevent them from adopting any 
measures in the State legislatures which conflicted 
with the Federal Executive at Washington, since 
five of the Northern States at the outbreak of the 
war had adopted Personal Liberty Bills in open 
defiance of the laws of Congress, shewing their utter 
contempt of the binding power of the Union and of 
its representatives. Unconstitutional all of it, on 
the basis of absolute power being vested in the 
Federal government. 



714 



THE EUREKA. 



THE EUREKA, OR GREAT DISCOVERT OF 
THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATORS. 

This was that they were the Constitution, and not 
the written parchment. They were doubtless aware 
that " Big Jobs " of jugglery and fraud were per- 
formed by their predecessors in office in the previous 
history of America ; and not wishing to be outdone 
they shouted, " we are the law," and therefore have 
the " means " at our command, not only to " check 
a State," but to preserve the old "Union Concern," 
and to change it from a "Limited Liability 
Company," to an Unlimited one. When, therefore, 
the Southern States seceded, and set up a rival 
establishment, they denounced it as unconstitu- 
tional, and determined to contest their claims by 
force of arms. Hence the war to subdue and coerce 
sovereign States — which were never subjects, but 
always free and equal partners, that they might 
retain the people which compose those states in 
unwilling subjection, and bend them to their own 
iron will. Unconstitutional all of it. But stress 
is laid on the more " perfect Union " that was 
formed. This, however, left the Union as before, 
with the foundation of the government of the United 
States resting on the sovereignty of the States as 
its instrument to do their will more perfectly and 
harmoniously in connexion with the commercial 
necessities of the times. When the United States 
government was formed, each State had the power 



THE EUREKA. 



715 



to adopt or reject for itself the Constitution sub- 
mitted to it ; which was drawn up in the name of 
the people of the United States. No number of 
States adopting the Constitution could lay its bonds 
on another State without its consent. This was 
conceded. On forming the more "perfect Union," 
the little State of Rhode Island stood aloof ; and 
though her conduct was reprobated, no one denied 
her right, or presumed to question her right to 
, decide for herself. This right then was as clear as 
the sun. All the States recognised it, and no 
power dared to touch the priceless pearl of her 
sovereignty in the affair. But it is claimed that 
when the more " perfect Union " was formed, State 
sovereignties were abolished. By what act? When 
and where did they terminate their existence ? 
And who were the parties that achieved the work ? 
Who does not see, therefore, that State sovereignties 
lay at the foundation of the government of the 
United States ; and as they came into the Union of 
their own free and independent choice ; even so, 
they have a right, if they will it, to pass acts of 
nullification and secession despite the manifestos of 
General Jackson, the charms of Webster's eloquence, 
or the assumption of extraordinary power claimed 
by the Federal government and States, which 
remain in the Union. With deep solicitude, there- 
fore Horace Greeley, the Federal historian, in an 
article published in the Independent, New York, 
August 18, 1864, asks the folowing questions : — 



716 



THE EUREKA. 



" Are we, in truth, or are we not, a Nation ? Is 
there, or is there not, such a thing as allegiance 
due to, and treason possible against, the Union? 
Suppose the legislature or convention of any state 
to pass an ordinance of nullification or secession, 
are the citizens of that state absolved thereby from 
their obligations and oaths of fidelity to the Union ? 
It is very late now to ask these and kindred ques- 
tions ; but, after spending half a million lives and 
untold millions of property on the problem, there 
should be an American answer to these questions 
— specific, unambiguous, decisive. We cannot 
afford to have lavished all this blood and treasure 
in vain. 

" If to secede from the Union at pleasure is the 
constitutional or reserved right of every State, then 
the war for the Union is aggressive, iniquitous, un- 
justifiable. If, on the other hand, there be no such 
right, then the war against the Union is the most 
atrocious rebellion and treason" 

The above questions are of vital moment, and 
admit of an easy solution. There can be no alle- 
giance due to, or treason possible against the United 
States Government, except in the states or terri- 
tory comprised in the Union. When the legisla- 
ture or convention of any state passes an ordinance 
of nullification or secession, that state and the ter- 
ritory originally belonging to, or claimed by it 
revert to the condition they were in prior to their 
connection with the Union ; and all obligations 



THE EUREKA. 



717 



and oaths of fidelity to the Union are null and 
void in either case. And as the Union is the crea- 
tion of the sovereign states, and has been nursed 
into life by them, it is presumptuous for any to 
deny, however great their veneration may be for it, 
that the States do not possess a power to abolish 
the Union, or to renounce it in their individual or 
united capacity, and any war to coerce or suppress 
their inherent vitality, or any of them, is not only 
aggressive, iniquitous, and unjustifiable, but des- 
tructive to the liberties of the people, and to life 
and property. It also makes the President and his 
supporters in their usurpation and exercise of mili- 
tary power to subdue Southern States justly charge- 
able with the cost and calamities of the American 
war, and ought to be held responsible for the moun- 
tains of slain it has piled, the abyss of debt it has 
opened, the interruption and stagnation of com- 
merce which it has created, and the precious 
alchemy of civilization with its carnival of blessings 
which it has turned into a wide-spread curse, amidst 
which human groans from the wounded in battle vi- 
brate on the ear, and the miseries of helpless widows 
and orphans spread themselves to the view of man. 
We know not, and care less, what the " American 
answer " may be to the questions propounded by the 
Hon. Horace Greeley. Ours, as given above, we 
claim to be " specific, unambiguous, decisive," and, 
therefore, however the war terminates, whether in 
the subjugation of the South, or in the establishment 



718 



THE EUREKA. 



of its independence, we maintain that no glory 
can accrue to the Federal arms, since every scar or 
wound received by a Federal soldier is a dishonour, 
and every victory won by a Federal army is a de- 
feat. From the beginning until now, it has been 
a miserable waste of human life and property, to 
promote the ambitious schemes and wicked pro- 
jects of unscrupulous and selfish men, and conducted 
with a malignity and ferocity unexampled in his- 
tory, although masked with the pretexts of order 
and liberty, and covered with the sanctity of reli- 
gion. Yet, strange to say, there are men who 
claim to be philanthropists who can see nothing 
in the President of America and his supporters who 
have brought those terrible calamities on America 
— " nothing but a grand simplicity of purpose, and 
a patriotism which knows no danger, and does not 
falter ;" whilst the late Richard Cobden, in a letter 
dated Midhurst, April 4, 1864, declared "if it 
can be shown that as the result of this war four 
millions of human beings have been elevated from 
the condition of mere chattels to the rank of free 
men, it will be an atonement and a consolation for 
the horrors with which it has been accompanied, 
such as have never yet been afforded in the annals 
of human warfare." An atonement to whom ? A 
consolation for whom ? Not surely to the friends 
of order, liberty, or Christianity. " If it can be 
shown "'{ Why should this have been necessary as 
the result of war, either directly or indirectly ? 



THE EUREKA. 



719 



Could not the freedom of the slave have been com- 
passed by appeals to reason and religion within the 
domains of peaceful argument, and in a manner in- 
finitely more satisfactory to both whites and blacks ? 
Ought we not, therefore, to enter our protests against 
the doctrine that the good ends of Providence can- 
not be attained by moral forces, and to pity " War 
Christians " who hold jubilees in the manner des- 
cribed in the following announcement : — " A circle 
of young ladies, attired emblematical of the States 
that endorsed and reinstated the immortal apostle 
of freedom, Abraham Lincoln, will appear support- 
ing the Goddess of Liberty, who will be represented 
by a young lady. Emancipation songs will be led 
by these ' daughters of liberty/ the audience join- 
ing in the choruses ;" or, as the greater apostle of 
freedom, William Loyd Garrison has been doing in 
Boston recently, where he ascended in grand dra- 
matic form a "pair of steps " formerly used at 
Charleston, South Carolina, as an auction block for 
the sale of human beings, but transmitted to Boston 
by Federal soldiers, since the fall of that city, to 
be used, not to commemorate the sea of blood 
through which those steps have been reached, or 
the Yankee rivets by which the poor slaves in 
Charleston were made fast before that " prison of 
hell," as Whittier calls it, " was thrown open." 

But to enumerate as follows the results of the 
war in order to make capital for its continu- 
ance and to mask its objects : — 



720 



THE ETTKEKA. 



ec l. Emancipation in Western Virginia. 

2. Emancipation in Missouri. 

3. Emancipation in the District of Columbia. 

4. Emancipation in Maryland. 

5. Slavery abolished and for ever prohibited in 
all Territories. 

6. Kansas admitted as a free State. 

7. Provisions made to admit Colorado, Nebraska, 
and Nevada as free States. 

8. Organisation of Idaho, Montana, Dacotah, and 
Arizona as free Territories. 

9. Recognition of the Independence of Hayti 
and Liberia. 

1 0. Three millions of slaves declared free by Pro- 
clamation of the President, January 1, 1863. 

11. All fugitive slave laws repealed. 

12. Inter-State slave law abolished. 

13. Negroes admitted to equal rights in the 
United States Courts, as parties to suits and as 
witnesses. 

1 4. Equality of the negro recognised in the pub- 
lic conveyances of the district of Columbia. 

15. All rebel states prohibited from returning to 
the Union with slavery. 

16. Free labour established on numerous planta- 
tions in South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ten- 
nessee, and Arkansas. 

1 7. Schools for the education of freed slaves in 
South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, and in East- 
ern Virginia — where, till within three years, to 
educate the negro was punishable with death. 



FEDERAL GEMS AND THE WAR 721 



18. The wives and children of all slaves em- 
ployed as freemen in military and other service of 
the United States made free. 

1 9. All negroes, bond and free, enrolled as part 
of the military force of the nation. 

20. The loyal people of Arkansas, Tennessee, 
Louisiana, and Florida, seeking a return to the 
Union on the basis of freedom to all, and of the 
abolition and prohibition of slavery. 

21. The abolition and prohibition of slavery by 
an amendment of the Constitution passed in the 
Senate by two-thirds majority, and by nearly the 
same in the House. Lost by lack of three or 
four votes, through the influence of Democratic 
members. 

22. The nation, through its representatives in 
Baltimore, June 8, made the abolition and prohibi- 
tion of slavery the basis of the governmental admi- 
nistration for the future. 

23. The Federal Government forbidden to employ 
any man as a slave, in any capacity. 

24. One hundred and fifty thousand negroes, 
mostly freed slaves, in the pay and uniform of the 
Government as soldiers." 

FEDERAL GEMS AND THE WAR. 

There are some who profess to look below the 
scum and refuse which the war in America has 
brought to the surface of society, and to have made 
2 z 



722 



FEDERAL GEMS AND THE WAR. 



the discovery of persons who are rare gems of moral 
value, worthy to be bound with them by the sac- 
rament of a common ancestr}^ a common and 
glorious history, and a common mission, the 
highest ever committed to man, (viz.) "that of 
leading the van of spiritual and political progress," 
and yet how careful they are to conceal them. This 
is a pity, as a little curiosity has been excited to 
know whether those gems come from the New 
England States, and are represented by the persons 
whom the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher described as 
"the picklock of society, the pickpocket of the 
world, and the regenerators of the South without 
the first syllable"? Whether they are associated 
with the ' War Christians ' whose leaders pander to 
the worst passions of the people, and take the . lead 
in expressions of ferocity like the Revs. W. J. Sloane, 
Dr. Cheever, 1 Parson Brownlow/ and Henry Ward 
Beecher making Wendell Phillips Esq. to ask with 
amazement " where is there a stronger power than 
the orthodox sects of the North for an army ?" 
Whether Whittier, Bryant, or Longfellow, who give 
their boundless sympathies to the invaders of the 
South, and hold up for imitation the men "who 
smash both tables of the law to load their guns, 
are their favourite specimens." Whether Mrs. 
Stowe, with her spurious philanthropy which covers 
up "Lady pious slaveholding, Christian slavetrad- 
ing," hides the horrors of the present war, and 
makes the children of the men whom the Northerns 



FEDERAL MILITARY POWER AND SUCCESS. 723 

have slain in battle to "rise up and call them 
blessed," is to their heart's content ? Or whether his 
late excellency Abraham Lincoln, who exacted blood 
for blood as the assumed executioner of God's ven- 
geance, and coolly and deliberately put on record 
his resolution, that " if necessary he would continue 
the war until the wealth piled by bondsmen by 
250 years' unrequitted toil should be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn with the lash should be 
paid by another drawn with the sword," is one of the 
gems referred to so worthy to be cherished in re- 
membrance, so endeared to the affections, whose 
virtues or deeds shall be chaunted in song, and 
eulogised by posterity ? Tell it not in Gath. Pub- 
lish it not in the streets of Askelon. 

FEDERAL MILITARY POWER AND SUCCESS. 

During the progress of the war we have not only 
seen state sovereignties trampled down beneath the 
black hoof of military despotism, but, also, the 
squatter sovereignty rights of citizens who have had 
the courage to protest against the usurpation of 
military despotic power, or have been only suspected 
of being unfriendly to the designs or wicked 
projects of the administrators of the Federal 
government. In the following narrative, the 
reader will be able to form an opinion of the white 
man's liberty under the stars and stripes. 



724 FEDERAL MILITARY POWER AND SUCCESS. 



" Suspected" Persons in the Northern States. 

Lately a number of persons who had been under 
arrest for various alleged offences against the Federal 
Government was set at liberty. One of the re- 
leased prisoners gives the following description of 
that which a suspected person is made to endure 
at the Old Capitol prison in Washington : — " His 
cell has one barred window. At first he has no 
companions save the vermin. The furniture of his 
cell is a sack of straw and a pair of blankets. He 
is fed on prison rations, and eats without knife, 
fork, or spoon. Turnkeys guard him who are fit 
for such business. Such was the treatment Colonel 
North was subjected to, and Mr. Jones, and scores 
and hundreds of others. It is against prison rules 
that the victim should see a lawyer or any other 
person as to his case, until his charges shall have 
been served, and he can neither secure, nor hasten 
his trial. Everything is at the beck of the high 
powers of the ' party founded on great moral ideas.' 
Perhaps the prison officer will permit fifteen- 
minute interviews with wife or relatives, perhaps 
not. The prison officer's dinner may not have 
agreed with him, or he may be taking a nap when 
the prisoner's wife arrives from New York or 
Missouri. His letters may pass out if they contain 
nothing that the prisoner cares most to write 
about, viz., himself and his imprisonment. Letters 
to him generally reach him after his trial, if he is 



FEDERAL MILITARY POWER AND SUCCESS. 725 

tried, or after his capacity is proved to pay for a 
fifteenth or twentieth of a mess and a room just a 
little less nasty than his cell. The victim finally 
may be informed of his alleged crime, and then he 
is constantly beset for a ' statement.' Let him 
decline to make one, let him express ignorance, and 
in some way or another he will find the screw 
turned down harder on him. Perhaps he is sent 
to his cell to meditate on the trial by torture and 
its relations to moral law as administered by the 
Republican party. Perhaps he puts his head out 
of his window for a look at the blue sky, and hears 
the whiz of a bullet, to remind him that white men 
have no rights which sentries are bound to respect. 
Perhaps he is able to recollect some law, human or 
divine, which he has broken heedlessly or wittingly. 
The recollection is fatal. He is passed over to the 
court ' organised to convict.' His ' statement ' is 
the basis of the charges, and he is convicted. The 
court which tries these prisoners being one for 
which there is no authority of law, it extorts even 
from the mouth of Thaddeus Stevens the admission 
that it is ' composed principally of men ignorant 
of law/ and it makes and gives judgments accord- 
ingly. The prisoner is protected from no injustice 
in the prosecution. These courts create crimes 
unknown to the civil or the military law, and, there 
being no punishment prescribed where there is no 
law, nothing limits the severity of their judgments. 
Personal malignity or political partizanship may 



726 FEDERAL MILITARY POWER AND SUCCESS. 

sharpen the sword, and against the blow which falls 
there is no redress for the victim. For the War 
Department has issued an order forbidding the 
divulging of the judgment of the military commis- 
sion in the case of a civilian until that judgment is 
executed." 

In the subjugation of the South by the Fe- 
deral government, therefore, we shall no more 
# hear of state sovereignties, except in connexion 
with diplomatic strategy to blind ambassadors, or 
foreign governments, as shown in the case of the 
attorney-general of Louisiana and the Fenians in 
New- York. The citizens, also, will no longer be 
able to claim that their "tongues are their own," 
and that with them they will prevail, except in the 
interest of their Federal rulers ; and as to foreign 
nations, a " fierce resentment," according to the 
late Richard Cobden, is to be let loose against those 
governments, or classes that have freely criticised 
their actions, and thereby subjected them to a 
damaging power and influence, and that he, the 
late eminent statesman and philanthropist, could 
give to those men who let out the resentment his 
unrestrained s} 7 mpathies as shewn in his avowal 
that, "From the moment the first shot was un- 
happily fired at Fort Sumter, thence forward his 
sympathies followed Federal commanders and sol- 
diers to the field with all the interests in their 
terrible efforts which he had felt in the labours 
of Mr. Sumner and the other champions of free- 



THE FOURTH OF MARCH. 



727 



dom, when their struggle was confined to the 
domain of peaceful arguments." 

SPECIOUS PLEAS OF THE FEDERALS. 

When the war commenced, the determination 
was announced on all occasions, and by all the 
means in the Federal power, " as the South has 
taken part in the election which terminated in 
favour of Lincoln, we will fight him into the presi- 
dency in all the States." The South, however, has 
taken no part in his second re-election ; and, there- 
fore, their former plea is no longer available ; and 
as the constitution of the United States requires 
that the governors should have the consent of the 
governed, we should like to know by what pro- 
cess the advocates of the Federal government arrive 
at the " plea now used," that the Federal Govern- 
ment has rights wherever her flag has floated." 
The Index has the following able article on the sub- 
ject, which we introduce to the reader. 

THE FOURTH OF MARCH. 

" The approaching inauguration of a new govern- 
ment to conduct the affairs of 20,000,000 of men 
— and which in the days of our children's children 
may rule over 100,000,000 of men — is, one would 
suppose, an event that must command the attention 
of the world. And the supposition is correct. On 



728 



THE FOURTH OF MARCH. 



the continent of America the 4th of March next is 
looked forward to as one of the few days in a cen- 
tury pregnant with mighty changes which in ail 
time to come will be a great landmark in history. 
In Europe statesmen, and all those who have any 
political intelligence, are discussing and thinking 
about the ceremony that will be performed in 
Washington on the 4th of March next. On that 
day Abraham Lincoln will be inaugurated as the 
first President of the section of the old United States 
which still retains the old name. In vain do some 
Federal partisans in this country try to deny this 
position. Sophistry can weave no web that will 
conceal the fact. The people of the Federal States, 
if not by words, acknowledge it by their acts. 
They may not be quite sure that Europe will, on 
and after the 4th of March, recognise the Confeder- 
ate States, but they know that on and after that 
day there will be no pretence for saying that the 
government of Washington has any legal or consti- 
tutional right to claim dominion over the States of 
the South. Hence the haste to secure, if possible, 
an immediate peace, and hence the rumours of re- 
cognition that are rife both in Europe and America. 
At such a juncture it may be desirable to set forth 
the position of Europe with respect to the two 
great Confederations of America. 

"It is utterly impossible for any one to invent 
any pretext to justify the assumption that after the 
4th of March next Mr. Lincoln will be President of 



THE FOURTH OF MARCH. 



729 



the Southern as well as of the Northern States. Mr. 
Lincoln is an elected magistrate, and has no heredi- 
tary right to rule the States of the South. He has 
not been elected President by the Southern States 
— or, to put it more forcibly, the Southern States 
have taken no part inhis election. What other claim, 
then, can Mr. Lincoln urge ? Not that of conquest, 
for the South is not conquered. There are only 
three titles to sovereignty known amongst men — 
hereditary descent, conquest, and election. No in- 
genuity can devise a fourth title. Will any one 
pretend that Mr. Lincoln is the hereditary ruler over 
the South ? Will any one pretend that Mr. Lincoln 
is the ruler over the South by virtue of conquest ? 
Will any one pretend that Mr. Lincoln is ruler over 
the South by the title of election ? 

"In despair some Federal partisans in Europe have 
cried out that the South might have taken part in 
the election if she would. The Federal Congress 
has in a most formal and solemn manner refuted 
this feeble suggestion. The constitution of the 
United States decrees as follows, respecting the 
election for President, the only action in which the 
several sovereign states of the Federation participate 
simultaneously, and which is indeed the only 
national act : — 

"'Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the 
legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors 
equal to the whole number of senators and repre- 
sentatives to which the State may be entitled in 



730 



THE FOURTH OF MARCH 



Congress. . . . The person having the greatest 
number of votes shall be the President, if such 
number be a majority of the whole number of 
electors appointed. . . . If no person have a 
majority, then, from the five highest in the list, the 
said house (of Representatives) shall in like manner 
(by ballot) choose the President. But, in choosing 
the President, the votes shall be taken by States, 
the representative from each State having one vote. 
A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a mem- 
ber or members from two-thirds of the States, and 
a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a 
choice/ 

" In January last the United States Congress de- 
creed that only 24 States should take part in the 
November election, and as the 24 included the 
bogus State of Western Virginia, the congressional 
decree forbade 11 of the 34 States from taking 
part in the election. Nor is that all. The Federal 
House of Representatives has lately adopted a re- 
solution that the States of Virginia, Tennessee, 
Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North 
Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, 
shall be excluded from the electoral count of the 
votes for President and Vice-President of the United 
States. Does not this in a most emphatic and legal 
manner bar the South from taking part in the Presi- 
dential election ? Does it not prove that Mr. Lincoln, 
who is not the hereditary sovereign of the South, nor 
the sovereign of the South by right of conquest, is 



THE FOURTH OF MARCH. 



not the sovereign of the South by virtue of election ? 
And since there is not a fourth title to sovereignty, 
is not the action of the United States Congress a 
de facto recognition of the separation of the South 
from the North ? There is not a statesman in 
Europe who does not give an affirmative reply to 
these questions. 

"We have maintained, and history will maintain, 
that the South had a legal right to recognition as 
an independent Confederacy as soon as the act of 
secession was accomplished ; but we do not deny 
that there was a flimsy argument against recogni- 
tion, or rather in favour of recognising the title of 
Mr. Lincoln as supreme magistrate of 34 States, 
because the 34 States took part in his election. 
But after the 4th of March next the recognition of 
Mr. Lincoln as the President of the United States 
cannot and will not involve his recognition as the 
chief magistrate of the Southern States. What 
then is to be done respecting the South ? In each 
of the Confederate States there is a regular govern- 
ment in full operation, and there is as much order 
and law as there is in England or France. There 
are large Confederate armies in the field, and be- 
tween the North and South there is a cartel of ex- 
change. The public loan of the Confederate States 
is quoted on every principal exchange in Europe. 
The second session of the second Congress of the 
Confederate States is sitting in Richmond. The 
President of the United States and Mr Seward 



732 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 



have gone to Virginia to confer with the Vice-Presi- 
dent of the Confederate States. Shall we say, then, 
that there is no government in the Confederate 
States ? Shall we say that for the first time in the 
history of the world there is a community without 
a government ? Shall we say that the Confederates 
are in that respect worse off than the tribes of 
equatorial Africa % Shall we say in effect that the 
Confederate States are in the position, of terra in- 
cognita, of lands that are owned by nobody, not 
even by their inhabitants, and that the said lands will 
be the lawful prize of those who first obtain posses- 
sion ? Yet this is the necessary deduction from 
non-recognition after the 4th of March next. The 
government of "Washington has clearly no claim to 
rule over the Southern States ; and, if we add that 
the Confederate government does not exist, we un- 
equivocally assert that the Confederate States con- 
stitute a territory that will lawfully belong to any 
government which can obtain possession thereof" 
The Federal government having taken possession of 
them by the sword, they are now in the position of 
conquered dependencies or provinces, and are at the 
mercy and sovereign will of the powers that be at 
Washington. 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 



As the curtain falls on the appalling scenes of the 
war, and the horrible tragedy at Washington in the 



THE REIGN OF TERROR, 



733 



assassination of Lincoln, the electric wires thrill us 
with the intelligence that the Federal Attorney- 
General Speed has made a highly important deci- 
sion on the terms of the capitulation of General 
Lee. In reply to a letter of the Secretary of War 
relating to these points, he decides, — " First, That 
the rebel officers who surrendered to General Grant 
have no homes in the loyal States, and have no 
right to come to places where their homes were in 
the loyal States prior to~ going into the rebellion. 
Second, That persons in the civil service of the re- 
bellion, or who have otherwise given it support, 
comfort, and aid, and were residents of rebel terri- 
tory, have no right to return to Washington under 
that stipulation. Third, That rebel officers certainly 
have no right to be wearing their uniforms in any 
of the loyal States." The Attorney-General adds, 
" that such rebel officers having done wrong in com- 
ing to the loyal States, are but adding insult to 
injury in wearing their uniforms ; that they have 
as much right to bear the traitor's flag through the 
streets of a loyal city as to wear a traitor's garb ; 
and that the stipulation of surrender permits no 
such thing, and the wearing of such uniform is an 
act of hostility against the Government." 

A bottom was necessary for the absolutism of the 
Federal government before a pathway could be 
opened for the exercise of despotic power over the 
once sovereign States of America. During the pro- 
gress of the war irresponsible power had been freely 



734 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 



made use of on the basis of military necessity, but 
now, for the first time in the history of America, 
civil law is evoked to sustain the supremacy of the 
Federal government to kill what Wendell Phillips, 
Esq. now calls " caste, dangerous state rights, and 
secession," the exercise of which would have sent 
him to the scaffold, or banished him into exile at 
every period of his public life prior to the existence 
of the war, and even down to the second year of its 
fearful progress. 

The creation and stretch of the Federal preroga- 
tive, in connection with the usurpation of despotic 
power, is immediately followed by an announcement 
from President Johnson that "the rebel leaders 
must be punished and impoverished, and their 
social position destroyed. Union men in the Con- 
federacy should be remunerated from the pockets of 
those who have brought suffering upon the country." 

This is highly sensational, but what follows is 
more startling and exciting still : — 

" New York, May 4. Morning. 

" President Johnson has issued the following pro- 
clamation : — 

" ' Whereas it appears from evidence in the 
bureau of the Military Department, that Mr Lin- 
coln's murder and Mr Seward's attempted assassi- 
nation were incited, concerted, and procured by 
Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, 
Beverly Tucker, George N. Sanders, W. C. Cleary, 



THE EEIGN OF TEREOR. 



735 



and other rebel traitors against the United States 
Government, harboured in Canada, the following 
rewards for the arrest of the said persons within 
the limits of the United States are therefore of- 
fered : — 100,000 dollars for Davis, 10,000 dollars 
for Cleary, and 25,000 dollars for each of the 
others.' " 

The reign of terror, therefore, is fully inaugu- 
rated, with its pains, penalties, and prison-houses. 
Henceforth the order of the day is to be bogus 
plots, false witnesses, and military or judicial mur- 
ders, associated with the crack of the rifle, or the 
creak of the scaffold, except the people awake from 
their stupor and delusion and stop these freaks of 
the village tailor, now made famous by his sudden 
elevation to the throne of democracy. 

The New York Chamber of Commerce, feeling 
the necessity of immediate action, has passed reso- 
lutions in favour of clemency and magnanimity to- 
wards the South. 

On the 23d of April Wendell Phillips, Esq., also 
delivered his " Lesson of the Hour," which he called 
" treason, in the Fremont Temple, Boston. Ad- 
dressing the audience as follows, Mr. Phillips said, 
— " What shall we say as to the punishment of 
rebels 1 The air is thick with threats of vengeance. 
I admire the motive which prompts these. But let 
us remember no cause, however infamous, was ever 
crushed by punishing its advocates and abettors. 
All history proves this. There is no class of men 



736 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 



base and coward enough, no matter what their views 
and purpose, to make the policy of vengeance suc- 
cessful. In bad causes, as well as good, it is 
still true that the blood of the martyrs is the seed 
of the Church. We cannot prevail against this 
principle of human nature. And again, with re- 
gard to the dozen chief rebels^ it will never be a 
practical question whether we shall hang them. 
Those not now in Europe will soon be there. In- 
deed, after parolling the bloodiest and guiltiest of 
all, Robert Lee-— (loud applause) — there would be 
little fitness in hanging any lesser wretch. The 
only punishment which ever crushes a cause is that 
which its leaders necessarily suffer in consequence 
of the new order of things made necessary to pre- 
vent the recurrence of their sin. It was not the 
blood of two peers and thirty commoners which 
England shed after the rebellion of 1715, or that 
of five peers and twenty commoners after the rising 
of 1745, which crushed the House of Stuart. 
Though the fight had lasted only a few months, 
those blocks and gibbets gave Charles his only 
chance to recover. But the confiscated lands of his 
adherents, and the new political arrangement of the 
Highlands, — -just, and recognised as such, because 
necessary, — these quenched his star for ever. Our 
rebellion has lasted four years. Government has 
exchanged prisoners, and acknowledged its bellige- 
rent rights. After that gibbets are out of the ques- 
tion. A thousand men rule the rebellion — are the 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 737 

rebellion. A thousand men ! We cannot hang 
them all. We cannot hang men in regiments. 
What ! cover the continent with gibbets ! We 
cannot sicken the nineteenth century with such a 
sight. It would sink our civilisation to the level 
of Southern barbarism. It would forfeit our very 
right to supersede the Southern system, which right 
is based on ours being better than theirs. To make 
its corner-stone the gibbet would degrade us to the 
level of Davis and Lee. The structure of govern- 
ment which bore the earthquake shock of 1861 
with hardly a jar, and which now bears the assassi- 
nation of its chief magistrate, in this crisis of civil 
war, with even less disturbance, needs for its safety 
no such policy of vengeance, and should use only 
so much severity as will fully guarantee security for 
the future. Banish every one of these thousand 
rebel leaders, — every one of them, on pain of death 
if they ever return ! (Loud applause.) Confiscate 
every dollar and acre they own. (Applause.) These 
steps the world and their followers will see are ne- 
cessary to kill the seeds of caste, dangerous State 
rights, and secession. (Applause.) Banish Lee 
with the rest. (Applause.) No government should 
ask of the South, which he has wasted, or of the 
North, which he has murdered, such superabundant 
Christian patience as to tolerate in our streets the 
presence of a wretch whose hand upheld Libby 
Prison and Andersonville, and whose soul is black 
with sixty-four thousand deaths of prisoners by 
3 A 



738 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 



starvation and torture. What of our new Presi- 
dent ? His whole life is a pledge that he knows 
and hates thoroughly that caste which is the Gib- 
raltar of secession. Caste, mailed in State rights, 
seized slavery as its weapon to smite down the 
Union. Said Jackson in 1833, — 'Slavery will be 
the next pretext for rebellion.' Pretext ! That 
pretext and weapon we wrench from the rebel hands 
the moment we pass the anti-slavery amendment 
to the constitution. Now, kill Caste, the foe who 
wields it. Andy Johnson is our natural leader for 
this. His life has been pledged to it. He put on 
his spurs with this vow of knighthood. He sees 
that confiscation, land placed in the hands of the 
masses, is the means to kill this foe. Land and the 
ballot are the true foundations of all governments. 
Entrust them, wherever loyalty exists, to all those, 
black and white, who have upheld the flag. (Ap- 
plause.) Reconstruct no State without giving to 
every loyal man in it the ballot. I scout all limita- 
tions of knowledge, property, or race. (Applause.) 
Universal suffrage for me. That was the Revolu- 
tionary model. Every freeman voted, black or 
white, whether he could read or not. My rule is, 
any citizen liable to be hanged for crime is entitled 
to vote for rulers. The ballot ensures the school. 
Mr. Johnson has not yet uttered a word which shows 
that he sees the need of negro suffrage to guarantee 
the Union. The best thing he has said on this 
point, showing a mind open to light, is thus re- 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 



739 



ported by one of the most intelligent men in the 
country — the Baltimore correspondent of the Bos- 
ton Commonivealth ; — ' The Vice-President was 
holding forth very eloquently in front of Admiral 
Lee's dwelling, just in front of the War Office in 
Washington. He said he was willing to send every 
negro in the country to Africa to save the Union. 
Nay, he was willing to cut Africa loose from Asia, 
and sink the whole black race ten thousand fathoms 
deep to effect this object. A loud voice sang out 
in the crowd, 'Let the negro stay where he is, 
Governor, and give him the ballot, and the Union 
will be safe for ever/ ' And I am ready to do that 
too ! ' — (loud applause) — shouted the Governor with 
intense energy, whereat he got three times three 
for the noble sentiment. I witnessed this scene, 
and was pleased to hear our Vice-President take 
this high ground ; for up to this point must the 
nation quickly advance, or there will be no peace, 
no rest, no prosperity, no blessing for our suffering 
and distracted country/ The need of giving the 
negro a ballot is what we must press upon the Pre- 
sident's attention. Beware of the mistake which 
fastened M'Clellan upon us, — running too fast to 
endorse a man while untried, — determined to be- 
lieve him hero and leader at any rate. The Pre- 
sident tells us that he waits to announce his policy 
till events call for it. A timely and statesmanlike 
course. Let us imitate it. Assure him in return 
that the Government shall have our support like 



740 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 



good citizens. But remind him that we will tell 
him what we think of his policy when we learn 
what it is. He says, ' "Wait — I shall punish ; I 
shall confiscate ; what more I shall do you will 
know when I do it.' Let us reply : ' Good ! So 
far good ! Banish the rebels. See to it also that, 
before you admit a single State to the Union, you 
oblige it to give every loyal man in it the ballot, 
— the ballot, which secures education,- — the ballot, 
which begets character where it lodges responsibi- 
lity, — the ballot, having which no class need fear 
injustice or contempt, — the ballot, which puts the 
helm of the Union into the hands of those who love 
and have upheld it. Land, — where every man's 
title deed, based on confiscation, is the bond which 
ties his interest to the Union ; ballot, — the weapon 
which enables him to defend his property and the 
Union ; these are the motives for the white man, — 
the negro needs no motive but his instinct and 
heart. Give him the bullet and the ballot ; he 
needs them ; and while he holds them the Union is 
safe.' To reconstruct now, without giving the 
negro the suffrage, would be a greater blunder, and, 
considering our better light, a greater sin than our 
fathers committed in 1789 ; and we should have no 
right to expect from such reconstruction any less 
disastrous results. This is the lesson God teaches 
us in the blood of Lincoln. Like Egypt, we are 
made to read our lesson in the ' blood of our first- 
born, and the seats of our princes left empty. We 



RECONSTRUCTION. 



741 



bury all false magnanimity in this fresh grave, 
writing over it the maxim of the coming four years, 
— ' Treason is the greatest of crimes, and not a mere 
difference of opinion.' That- is the motto of our 
leader to-day. That is the warning this atrocious 
crime sounds throughout the land. Let us heed it, 
and need no more such costly teaching. (Loud 
applause.)" 

RECONSTRUCTION. 

There having been a final, speedy, and crush- 
ing defeat to the Confederates, " War Christians ,; 
and the revolutionary leaders of the North are dis- 
cussing measures and preparing plans for the recon- 
struction of the States of the South. A committee 
on the above basis has been formed in the Federal 
Congress, and bills are before both houses on the 
subject ; but the people in the North are unde- 
cided as yet what principle to adopt in the recon- 
struction of the Southern States. Action, there- 
fore, is the cry of the stump orators, since the 
administrators of the Federal government have 
evinced a strong desire to evade the manhood of 
the negro. The State of Louisiana, for instance, 
which is now under the military regime of Andrew 
Johnson, tramples down the inalienable rights of the 
* negro, subjects him to the domineering infamous 
overseer spirit that has always prevailed on the 
slave plantations in olden times ; and yet, in a bill 



742 



RECONSTRUCTION. 



before Congress, a proposal is made to hand over 
the government to the Yankee Federal overseers, 
who now occupy the places of the old plantation 
masters, and, of courser, would enter Congress as the 
chosen representatives of Louisiana, having, as Wen- 
dell Philips says " the bowie knife for their sym- 
bol." Some of the revolutionists, like Frederick 
Douglas, claim that the extension of the franchise 
to the negro would meet the case ; but as this has 
proved powerless to shield the negro from indignity 
in Massachusetts throughout her entire history up 
to the commencement of the war, what chance 
would there be for him in Louisiana amongst the 
proud overseers who work him from sun to sun 
under the goad of the lash ? If, in the one case, 
political, social, and religious ostracisms have made 
the negroes an alien race, and branded them as 
outcasts, what could we expect of the other ? Others 
however, maintain that the enfranchisement of the 
negro would use up the abolition capital of philan- 
thropic agitators. The New York Herald says : — 
" What we want now is a final settlement with these 
disorganising sectional factions on the slavery ques- 
tion, and the negro question. The war has killed 
Southern slavery. Let it be buried and put out of 
the way as soon as possible. It ends the slavery 
agitation. But there is yet something left for aboli- 
tion capital in the negro agitation. Against this 
demand that as slavery is abolished, and that as the 
African race have powerfully assisted us in putting 



RECONSTRUCTION. 743 

down the rebellion and in saving the life of the na- 
tion they should have a share in the political right 
of the ballot box, what valid objection can be made ? 
We cannot long resist this demand in view of the 
extinction of slavery and the services of the Southern 
blacks during this war. With every opportunity 
and in every way they have been our faithful allies. 
We have had two hundred and fifty thousand of 
them in the service of the army and navy. Their 
battle of emancipation, involving four millions of 
their race, has turned the scale in our favour, 
and we must yield to the sagacity of President Lin- 
coln's emancipation edicts. It is folly to argue 
against established facts. We adhere to the lights of 
experience and common sense. Hence we would say 
again to President Johnson that he has nothing to 
fear in labouring to give the Southern blacks the 
right of suffrage in the reconstruction of the rebel- 
lious States. Political negro exclusions, looking 
to the safety of negro slavery, are no longer neces- 
sary, slavery being dead. Above all, we want to see 
not only the slavery question, but the negro ques- 
tion, as a political hobby, permanently settled, so 
that Northern and Southern negro agitators may be 
silenced, in being deprived of the last parcel of their 
stock in trade — negro suffrage in the reconquered 
States." 



744 EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO. 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO. 

This is the summum bonum of some of the re- 
constructionists ; but what hope is there of confer- 
ring such an inestimable boon on the black man in 
America, unless the white man, who claims to be 
his superior or master, is properly educated as well? 
To get the black man " up," the white man must 
be first got up to the proper mark or standard, or 
he will use all his instrumentalities and activities 
to keep the negro down, as shewn in every state of 
the North. 

To begin with the blacks, therefore, is to com- 
mence at the wrong end. The right place is at the 
White House, Washington, as, according to the 
testimony of Frederick Douglas, published in the 
Halifax Guardian, the rule laid down for the 
guidance of statesmen, so-called, was, "Do evil by 
choice, right from necessity. " Then a few lessons 
might be given to senators and legislators in 
Congress on the violation of state sovereignties by 
Federal administrators, through the supreme inter- 
ference of war, and the imposition of military 
governors intruded upon New Orleans, Nashville, 
and Newburn, which the Constitution makes trea- 
sonable, except the aid of the President and his 
administrators was invoked by the governors or 
executive of the states thus invaded. 

A few lessons, also, would be very salutary to 
the governors of Northern states who have coalesced 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO. 745 



with the executive at Washington to trample down 
the sovereignties of Southern states, thereby im- 
perilling their own, as the touch of Seward's "bells" 
and Butler's mission to New York demonstrate ; 
the former causing " suspects " to be thrown into 
prison, where, according to the frightful details 
given in the Edinburgh Witness and Morning 
Herald in 1861, they have been made to fill up, in 
their bitter experience, a chapter of horrors, com- 
pared with which Austrian despotism is white- 
robed innocence ; and the latter throwing down 
state sovereignties as if the " pretty theory of the 
American Constitution was only a thing of fancy 
or mere convenience." The editor of the London 
Daily Telegraph, Nov. 29, 1864, says : — "When 
Butler went to New York, almost avowedly to use 
the executive forces in overawing those of the State, 
a grand landmark in the history of America was 
established. It remained to be seen whether his 
intervention would be resisted ; it was not ; it was 
accepted, partly with fear, partly with satisfaction. 
The evil precedents set by the Federals in Louisiana, 
Tennessee, Maryland, and other states, were re- 
peated in New York. The empire city scarcely 
murmured — nay, it accepted the brusque Butler as 
" the man for the situation ; " and before he de- 
parted, to rejoin an army which he has commanded 
without credit, the " elective affinities " ' had so 
closely drawn together the buffoonery of Beecher 
and the brutality of Butler, that the soldier who 



746 EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO. 



outrages women was nominated as President by 
the preacher who trades upon religion." 

The education might then be extended to our 
entire Northern people on the Fourth of July 
orations, which are condemnatory of George the 
' Third and his brave generals, who were princes of 
light to Johnson, Seward, & Co., Generals Sherman, 
Grant, Banks, Sheridan, and Butler. 

Some lessons might be given to advantage on 
the unwillingness of our Northern people to sus- 
tain the public credit, which impose on Federal 
financiers the Egyptian task of making bricks with- 
out straw. And the concluding series might with 
propriety embrace the monstrous theories pro- 
pounded by Federal advocates, " that bloodshed and 
strife must accompany the abolition of slavery ;" 
that " war was a beneficent power in proportion to 
its destructiveness," that the "longer the war was 
protracted, the more beneficial it would be and 
that, "as the North was able to hold out the longest, 
those advocates could await with the completest 
satisfaction, and the profoundest resignation, the 
period when the brave and chivalrous Southerns 
would be hurled into the regions of exhaustion and 
ruin ;" and also coupled with the above theories the 
following facts might be given, as illustrations of 
the barbarism of war : — That the late President Lin- 
coln had assumed the right to punish their neigh- 
bours for their sins ; and to the extent of their 
crimes — That General Sherman by the torch had 



EDUCATION OF THE NEGEO. 



747 



used up South Carolina, which Mr. Beecher calls 
the " rotten stave in the barrel of the Union" in op- 
position to the usages of civilized warfare — That 
General Sheridan has carried out to the letter the 
following special order, signed " Ulyss. S. Grant, 
which was published in the New York Papers, Oct. 6, 
1864, and reads as follows : — 

Head-quarters, &c. 

" Bo all the damage you can to the railroad and 
crops. Carry off all stock of all descriptions, and 
negroes, so as to prevent further planting. If the 
war is to continue another year, let the Shenandoah 
Valley remain a barren waste" 

And also that the Boston Recorder cites as " a 
lesson which American Christians should not forget 
at such a crisis as this," the example of Saul, who, 
having been commanded by the voice of the Lord, 
speaking through Samuel the prophet, to "go and 
smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they 
have, and spare them not, but slay both man and 
woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel 
and ass," had been " rejected from being king over 
Israel," because he took Agag, the king of the 
Amalekites, alive instead of killing him, and be- 
cause he allowed the soldiers of the Jewish army to 
"spare the best of the sheep and oxen," under 
pretence of reserving them for sacrifice, instead of 
destroying them utterly, according to the literal 
terms of the commission he had received from the 
Almighty. 



748 PEACE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 



PEACE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

" The nation needs peace/' says the Hon. Horace 
Greely, the editor of the Tribune : — " the nation 
needs peace and not vengeance." This is necessary 
for the purpose of reconstruction. An abortive 
attempt has been made to promote peace and good- 
will on the basis of a foreign war. The object 
contemplated was to clear the North American 
continent from what is called " imperial usurpation." 
The reasons specified were to cover their own shame 
in going to war with each other. Foreign war has 
always been a favourite object with political parties 
in America, in order to make capital to promote 
partizan objects. The Federal administrators have 
also presumed on the peaceable disposition of foreign 
nations, according to the testimony of Sir E. Head, 
by backing up unrighteous demands with threats 
of war ; and the avowed leaders of North and South 
have met on the banks of the Potomac, and held a 
conference to devise a scheme to heal up the 
breaches of the States and people, where both parties 
entered upon a discussion of the "extrinsic policy" 
of war, as a means to reunite the North and South, 
and make them fast in the bonds of the Union. 
This cannot be very consolatory or nattering to 
neighbouring governments or nations. Whether 
the above policy is to be revived is not for us to 
say, but the Editor of the New York Times. March 
27th says, " Whatever may be the policy of our 



PEACE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 749 

government, sixty days will not elapse after the 
disbandment of our armies, before Maximilian will 
see the gleam of American bayonets. Thousands 
of veteran soldiers in both the National and Con- 
federate armies, have contracted a taste for war that 
would of itself draw them into any fold within their 
reach. Other thousands who would be willing 
under ordinary circumstances to return to peaceful 
pursuits, would be eager to join in clearing the 
continent from imperial usurpation. Our govern- 
ment has no power to prevent any soldier from 
going to Mexico, and enlisting after he gets there, 
under the republican flag. Could those who had 
been American soldiers, fight foreign mercenaries 
for any length of time on behalf of republicanism, 
without so firing the American heart at home that 
the government would have no alternative but to 
launch into the conflict." In the Washington 
Chronicle, May 5 th, appears the following adver- 
tisement : — 

u Mexico ! — To all Officers and Soldiers. 

" Now that our war is over, all who wish to 
emigrate to Mexico, in accordance with the Mexican 
decree, will call at 258, Pennsylvania-avenue, and 
register their names and addresses ; or address, by 
note, Colonel A. J. M., 380, E-street, Washington, 
D. C. 

" Offices will also be opened in New York, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities. 

Office-hours at 258, Pennsylvania -avenue, be- 
tween Nine and Four. 



750 ALLEGIANCE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 



ALLEGIANCE AND RECONSTRUCTION, OR THE 
APPLIANCES OF CIVILIZATION. 

These also are necessary ; but what signs are there 
of a "hearty return to loyalty " or civilization? The 
following letter recently addressed to Governor 
Fletcher of Missouri, by the late President, presents 
the most appalling picture of misery and calamity 
next to war itself, that the human mind can con- 
template in connexion with terrestrial things. 

Executive Mansion, Washington. 
February 20, 1865. 

"It seems that there is now no organised 
military force of the enemy in Missouri, and, }^et, 
that destruction of life and property is rampant 
everywhere. Is not the cure of this within easy 
reach of the people themselves. It cannot be but that 
every man, not naturally a robber or a cut-throat, 
would gladly put an end to this state of things. 
A large majority in each locality must feel alike 
on this subject, and if so, they only need to reach 
an understanding one with another. Every one 
leaving all others alone solves the problem. And 
surely each would do this, but for his apprehension 
that others would not leave him alone. Cannot 
this mischievous distrust be removed ? Let neigh- 
bourhood meetings be everywhere called and held, 
all entertaining a sincere purpose for mutual secu- 
rity in the future, whatever they may heretofore 



EXTERMINATION, ETC. 



751 



have thought, said, or done about the war, or about 
any thing else. Let all such meet, and, waiving 
all else, pledge each to cease harassing others, and 
make common cause against whoever persists in 
making, aiding, or encouraging farther disturbances. 
The practical means they all best know how to adopt 
and apply. At such meetings old friendships will 
cross the memory, and honour and Christian charity 
will come into help. 

Please consider whether it may be well to sug- 
gest this to the now afflicted people of Missouri. — 
Yours truly, 

A. Lincoln. 

Here is intestine succeeding to civil war, turning a 
whole State into lawless banditties of robbers and 
murderers ; and the remedy prescribed to rid Mis- 
souri of these gangs of desperadoes is to put the 
law into their own hands, with full license to use 
the prerogatives of Judge Lynch. This is what is 
called "free" America. 

EXTERMINATION, CONFISCATION, AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

This is the deepest pit in the Union Inferno ; 
and yet, according to the testimony of the New 
York Times, the organ of the Federal Government, 
the Northern war chieftains are prepared to de- 
scend into this pit in order to bridge over the course 
of events in their favour. The article is so im- 
portant that we give it in full. It is headed 



752 WHAT IS THE SOUTH FIGHTING FOR ? 



" WHAT IS THE SOUTH FIGHTING FOR I" 

There is a prevalent opinion here in the North 
that it is fighting for slavery. It is erroneous. 
Though a passion for slavery was the immediate 
occasion of the war, it does not now sustain the war. 
The South would buy triumph to-morrow, if it 
could, by a complete sacrifice of slavery. It would 
not yield though it could take ' a bond of fate, 
that by yielding it could save slavery. What J ef. 
Davis told Colonel J acques, in his confidential in- 
terview, is perfectly true — that slavery had now 
nothing to do with the war, and that the only ques- 
tion now involved is the question of Southern in- 
dependence; that is to say, the independence of 
the ' Confederacy/ There seems, then, to be sub- 
stantial agreement, both by Jeff. Davis, and his 
opponents of every shade, that the sole object of the 
South is to vindicate and for ever establish State 
independence and sovereignty. It is precisely that 
for which the South is fighting — exactly the con- 
verse of this national principle for which the North 
is fighting. We can tell the South, in all sincerity, 
that the Northern people will carry this war to any 
extremity rather than let the nationality be broken. 
This is the unalterable determination of nine- 
tenths of the Northern people, whether supporters 
or opponents of President Lincoln's Administra- 
tion. They know that sooner or later they will 
break down the fighting power of the South. They 



WHAT IS THE SOUTH FIGHTING FOE, \ 753 

know, too, that they can afterwards maintain the, 
national authority over the South, if not with 
Southern acquiescence, on a basis of mutual respect 
and good-will and civil equality, then by throwing 
open all the lands of the enemies of the Govern- 
ment to the permanent possession of every actual 
settler, from whatever quarter of the world, and 
the repeopling of the South by a loyal population. 
We are not willing to believe that the madness of 
the South will be so long prolonged as to drive the 
Government to that resort. But that resort will be 
used, and even others sterner yet, if need be, sooner 
than let the nation be divided and destroyed. The 
national unity is our only safety. The South may 
be sure that it will be maintained at all costs." 
We entreat the reader, therefore, to mark the italics 
in the above article, and to bear in mind that the 
New York Times is one of the principal organs of 
the Federal Government. The London Standard, 
commenting on the above, said, Its language is 
" We care nothing about slavery. That is not in 
question. The South claims its independence, — a 
right which it enjoyed in its sovereign States before 
the Union was formed, and claimed the privilege 
to resume ever since, but rather than allow our 
empire to be curtailed by the secession of eleven or 
thirteen States, we will exterminate their people, 
and fill them with creatures of our own." This, 
indeed, is a Federal use of the sword without the 
3 B 



754 GENEROSITY, KINDNESS, ETC. 



hilt ; and as they tighten the grasp and deal each 
blow, make the sword cut into their own flesh. 

GENEROSITY, KINDNESS, AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

With the exception of the leaders, all rebels, so 
called, who take the oaths of fidelity to the Union, 
are to receive complete amnesty, be made to feel 
that they are brethren, and admitted to communion 
and fellowship with Northern "hearts of love." 
The states which formed the basis of the old Union, 
are to be a millennium where Southern wolves and 
leopards are to dwell with Northern lambs and kids 
in a state of greater security and happiness than 
before the war. John Bright, M.P., in a recent 
speech at Birmingham, described this millennium as 
being very near, whilst the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, the "typical preacher of bloodshed and 
war," has received a commission to inaugurate 
it at Charleston, South Carolina. On the an- 
nouncement of this mission to the members of his 
congregation, Mr. Beecher said, "If others went 
with feelings of exultation over a fallen foe, for his 
part, he went as a brother to appeal to mislead 
brethren, from the day of their misapprehension, to 
the day of knowledge. It would be to say to them, 
that after four years of blood and darkness, we had 
brought back to them the same hearts of love, that 
they had smitten in these long four years. If there 
be any minded in that spirit to go, praying the 



GENEROSITY, KINDNESS, ETC. 



755 



blessing of God to rest, not on the North alone, but 
on the whole undivided country, he would welcome 
them." 

This glorious scene is to follow on the heels of a 
forced submission by the bayonet, in a country 
where there is no moral stamina, where the people 
have been trained up in the belief that "wickedness 
is cleverness," where President Lincoln had no thing- 
better to recommend than Vigilance Committees 
and Judge Lynch, as the appliances of civilization 
to the "now afflicted people of Missouri," shewn 
in his letter to Governor Fletcher, and where chris- 
tian poets, orators, philanthropists, and ministers 
have unitedly abandoned the moral for the military, 
and raised the cry of 'blood/ with savage vehe- 
mence, that they might espouse and shew their at- 
tachment to the " bigger rights of the bigger 
people." " A fierce resentment, however, is to be 
" let loose " on the " British upper classes," and 
those " arch deceivers," who are represented by pro- 
federal advocates and journals "as having misunder- 
stood every event, misread every sign of the times, 
misinterpreted every expression of popular feeling, 
and miscalculated every probability in the field of 
military operations," except the immaculate New 
York correspondent of the Daily News ; and there- 
fore, they had better bare their shoulders and ad- 
just their wrists to the triangles without delay, that 
they may receive the chastisement which is to be 
meted out to them. 



756 PROGRESS AND RECONSTRUCTION. 



PROGRESS AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

Progress is a talismanic word with many of the 
different classes of reformers and regenerators of the 
age in which we live ; but real progress must take 
up in its mighty embrace the heaven enkindled 
torch of truth which shines the brightest when it is 
most shaken, and is associated with peaceful blood- 
less victories. It is here where the fatal mistake 
has been made by the leaders and chieftains of our 
American revolutionists, both in the Churches and 
States, for, although they may be the heroes of the 
hour, their existence is a world-wide calamity, and 
a matter to be deprecated in all coming time. Dis- 
carding all those glorious principles which make old 
things new, and the calm and rational progress 
which is inseparably linked with the use of right 
means, as well as the attainment of the right end ; 
or associating noble principles with the fire and 
sword, the torch and the dagger, these men have 
brought down upon themselves the severest censure 
and the bitterest reproaches of mankind in conse- 
quence of the appalling calamities, wide spread 
misery and ruin which they have produced ; the 
cause of truth, liberty, and progress which they dis- 
honoured, and the immense difficulties and monster 
prejudices which their religious war fanaticism will 
cause to rise up before all good men and true, who 
are seeking to overpower strength with weakness, 
and to conquer hostility with love. But we are 



PROGRESS AND, RECONSTRUCTION. 



757 



now called to look at the men of blood, and to see 
how loving and kind they are. The men whose 
lives they have been seeking were everything that 
was vile and infamous, so long as they thwarted 
their vast schemes of ambition, but no sooner are 
they subjugated than they are "brethren," and are 
to be met with "hearts of love." First of all, the 
lambs are turned into lions and the doves into vul- 
tures. Now again they are resuming their former 
status, and are to astound the world with their 
" sublime magnanimity in the excitement of their 
final triumph." 

There is quite as much hope that the world will 
move onwards in the pathway of mercy and im- 
provement without the use of those means which 
God hath provided, as by the prostitution of the 
same to vile and selfish ends. Amidst the vast 
changes witnessed in connexion with other systems 
which obtain among men, there is no change in the 
adaptation of Christianity to men or nations, or in its 
efficiency. It is ever fresh and new ; and its power 
to elevate and bless mankind, is as manifest now 
as at any period of the world. The men, therefore, 
who have robbed it of its value and impaired its 
efficiency in America by their wilful perversion and 
falsification, or prostitution of it in the adoption of 
brute force, have no claim on the admiration or 
esteem of mankind as the benefactors of the human 
race, but deserve their severest reprobation with all 
their abettors and promoters, and ought to be ranked 



758 THE AMERICAN WAR AND MISSIONS OF MERCY. 

with the enemies of the human race, and not their 
friends. 

Such men may exert an influence for evil, but 
not for good, and to commit the cause of order, 
liberty, or progress into their hands is to place them 
in villanous custody, and to reverse the order of 
events like the American citizen, who, for the pur- 
pose of arresting attention caused his sign to be set 
upside down. One day, while the rain was pour- 
ing down with great violence, a son of Hibernia was 
discovered directly opposite standing with some 
gravity upon his head, fixing his eyes steadfastly 
upon the sign. On an enquiry being made of this 
inverted gentleman, why he stood in so singular an 
attitude, he answered " I am trying to read that 
sign/' Even so it is impossible to decipher intelli- 
gently and approvingly the creed or the conduct of 
our religious War Crusaders in America ; or our 
Federal revolutionary chieftains from any civilised 
or christian stand point. To achieve this task you 
must take the blood-rusted key of past ages, and 
tumble yourselves topsy-turvy into the midst of its 
barbarism. 

THE AMERICAN WAR AND MISSIONS OF MERCY. 

Ambassadors of peace have been urgently needed, 
but never were they so scarce. The Churches of 
Christ, whose mission ought ever to be one of 
peace and good-will to men, have been silent and 



THE AMERICAN WAR AND MISSIONS OF MERCY. 759 



inactive, both in the old world and new, so far as 
any organic action is concerned, to stop the effusion 
of blood. Ambitious and selfish men lusting for 
power have made the world weep tears of sorrow 
and grief, and bound endless burdens on mankind 
to accomplish their own ignoble ends ; and yet no 
alarm has been sounded in God's holy mountain — 
no invitation extended to come to the help of the 
Lord against the men of violence and blood, in any 
united or concentrated form, or manner. How are 
we to account for this ? Does it arise from the fact 
that the churches of Christ in America have become 
a " war power " instead of a peace power, and have 
been the originators as well as the principal 
sustainers of the cruel, fratricidal war that has 
deluged our land in blood? Could the British 
churches be ignorant of this when Mr. Beecher 
came into their midst as the apostle of war, with 
the language of blood on his lips, urging war to 
the bitter end, thereby prostituting the Word of 
God, the code of liberty, and the prices current, 
which he so freely made use of, steeped in blood ? 
Why, then, was there no deputation sent across the 
Atlantic to preach peace to them, and heal the 
breaches of the people ? When the Madaii were in 
prison for reading the Word of God, with what in- 
dignation did the British churches ring in the ears 
of the Duke of Tuscany, and the Pope, that in an 
affair of conscience men were not to be trifled with. 
Had conscience nothing to do with the fearful atro- 



760 THE AMERICAN WAR AND MISSIONS OF MERCY. 



cities and wholesale slaughters which have polluted 
the soil and degraded the people of America? Is 
a whole race of people to enter upon, and prosecute 
the mission of Cain, and no well devised schemes 
or combined vigorous efforts be made to stop their 
barbarous effusion of blood ? Were the churches of 
this land blinded with the theory that if they 
attempted to interfere with the present struggle it 
would help to keep the slaves in bondage in the 
Southern States, and lay the foundation for carrying 
the slave population clear through to the Pacific 
ocean, as has been falsely alleged ? Is it urged that 
the Americans would not receive addresses or depu- 
tations charged with the mission of peace ? Surely 
Federal administrators and the churches and re- 
ligious associations of America are as approachable 
as the Russian emperors, Alexander and Nicholas, 
the Kings of Denmark and Sweden, the Duke of 
Tuscany and the Pope, to whom addresses or depu- 
tations were sent on former occasions ? Why, then, 
was not the christian obligation urged of ceasing to 
shed blood ? Is the plea presented that you would 
have been misunderstood ? Those who have abetted 
those scenes of violence have not been afraid of being 
misunderstood, and why should you ? What a last- 
ing disgrace that no men of standing position or 
honour have been found to go on such an er- 
rand of mercy, to embark in such a sublime mission 
to our fellowmen. We are quite aware that the 
Peace Society prepared an address which was duly 



PEESIDENT LINCOLN AND THE FEIENDS. 761 



forwarded to Washington and Kichmond ; but the 
following letter will shew what has been going 
on behind the scenes at the White House, the Pre- 
sident's Executive Mansion, in connexion with the 
Peace-men, or the Friends : — 

PEESIDENT LINCOLN AND THE FEIENDS. 

The following heretofore unpublished letter, from 
the late President, will be read with interest, par- 
ticularly by members of the Society of Friends. It 
was written to Mrs. Eliza P. Gurney, the widow of 
the late well-known Friend and philanthropist, 
Joseph John Gurney, who was one of the wealthiest 
bankers of London, by Mr. Lincoln, prior to his re- 
election. Mrs. Gurney is an American lady, and 
since her husband's death has resided at Burling- 
ton, N.J. 

" My Esteemed Feiend, — I have not forgotten, 
probably never shall forget, the very impressive 
occasion when yourself and friends visited me on a 
Sabbath forenoon two years ago. Nor has your 
kind letter, written a year later, ever been forgotten. 
In all, it has been your purpose to strengthen my 
reliance in God. I am much indebted to the good 
Christian people of the country for their constant 
prayers and consolations, and to none of them more 
than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are 
perfect and must prevail, though we erring mortals 
may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. 



762 god's overruling providence. 



We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible 
war long before this, but God knows best, and has 
ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His 
wisdom, and our own errors therein. Meanwhile we 
must work earnestly in the best light he gives us, 
trusting that so working still conduces to the great 
end He ordains. 

Surely, He intends some great good to follow this 
mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, 
and no mortal could stay. 

Your people, — the Friends — have had and are 
having great trials, on principle and faith, opposed 
to both war and oppression. They can only op- 
pose (practically) oppression by war. In this dil- 
emma some have chosen one horn and some the 
other. 

For those appealing to me on conscientious 
grounds, I have done, and shall do the best I could 
and can, in my own conscience under my oath to 
the law. That you believe this I doubt not, and 
believing it I shall still receive for our country and 
myself your earnest prayers to our Father in heaven. 
— Your sincere friend, A. Lincoln." 

god's overruling providence. 

In the events of Jehovah's providences we 
learn His will. Judgment is His strange work, 
but sometimes it is necessary. ■ In no country of 
the world has this been more manifest than in 



god's overruling providence. 763 

America. God bad given the command to His 
people in that country to go forward in their 
sublime mission to cast out the Canaanites of evil, 
and to destroy the works of the devil, but .they 
refused to obey His voice. In their hands there was 
all that was requisite for their guidance, but the 
needle of God's truth was so mixed up with, as well as 
influenced by baser metals, that instead of pointing 
them towards the desired haven of successful enter- 
prise which was within their reach, it sent them 
straight on to the rocks of danger and difficulty, 
thus demonstrating that the path of duty is pre- 
eminently the path of safety. Exhortation, per- 
suasion, warning, and remonstrance were met with 
an air of stolid indifference, or bitter sarcasm and 
reproach. At length the golden opportunity of 
doing God's work in His own way by the use of 
peaceful means passed away, and the whirlwind 
storm of divine vengeance commenced. When 
referring to this, Wendell Phillips, Esq., in a speech 
delivered in the Fremont Temple, Boston, on the 23d 
April, exclaimed : — "Thejudgments of God have found 
us out. Years gone by chastised us with whips — 
these chastise us with scorpions. Thirty years ago 
how strong our mountain stood, laughing prosperity 
on all its sides ! None heeded the fire and gloom 
which slumbered below. It was nothing that a 
giant sin gagged our pulpits, that its mobs ruled 
our cities, burnt men at the stake for their opinions, 
and hunted them like wild beasts for humanity. 



764 god's overruling providence. 



It was nothing that in the lonely quiet of the 
plantation there fell on the unpitied person of the 
slave every torture which hellish ingenuity could 
devise. It was nothing that as husband and 
father, mother and child, the negro drained to its 
dregs all the bitterness which could be pressed into 
his cup ; that, torn with whip and dogs, starved, 
hunted, tortured, racked, he cried, ' How long ! ok 
Lord, how long ! ' In vain did a thousand 
witnesses crowd our highways, telling to the world 
the horrors of this prison-house. None stopped to 
consider, none believed. Trade turned away its 
deaf ear — the Church gazed on them with stony 
brow — Levites passed with mocking tongue. 
But what the world would not look at God has 
set to-day in a light so ghastly bright that it almost 
dazzles us blind. What the world refused to 
believe God has written all over the face of the 
continent, with the sword's point, in the blood of 
our best and most beloved. We believe the agony 
of the slave's hovel, the mother and the husband, 
when it takes its seat at our board. We realise 
the barbarism that crushed him in the sickening 
and brutal use of the relics of Bull's Run, in the 
torture and starvation of Libby Prison, where 
idiocy was mercy, and death God's best blessing ; 
and now still more bitterly we realise it in the coward 
spite which strikes an unarmed man, unwarned, behind 
his back ; in the assassin fingers which dabble with 
bloody knife at the throats of old men on sick 



god's overruling providence. 765 

pillows. Oh, God ! let this lesson be enough ! 
Spare us any more such costly teaching ! This 
deed is but the result and fair representative of 
the system in whose defence it was done. No 
matter whether it was previously approved at 
Richmond, or whether the assassin, if he reaches 
the Confederates, be received witli all honour, as 
the wretch Brooks was, and as this bloodier wretch 
will surely be, wherever rebels are not dumb with 
fear of our cannon. No matter for all this, God 
shows this terrible act to teach the nation, in 
unmistakeable terms, the terrible foe with which it 
has to deal. But for this fiendish spirit, North 
and South, which holds up the rebellion, the 
assassin had never either wished or dared such a 
deed. This lurid flash only shows us how black 
and wide the cloud from which it sprang." 

There are those who admit that these terrible 
judgments of the Almighty were necessary so far 
as the Southern people of America were concerned, 
but claim exemption for the more guilty inhabitants 
of the North, who traversed the Scriptures to make 
it uphold the wild and guilty phantasy that man 
may hold property in man, and that one man is 
inferior to another because he wears a different 
colour on his skin, turned the churches into 
synagogues of Satan that they might do his work 
more earnestly and thoroughly in seeking to exter- 
minate those pestilent fellows so called, (viz.,) the 
abolitionists, fit out slave ships as missionary ships, 



766 god's overruling providence. 



mortgage slave plantations, build up walls of caste 
in the creation of black schools, churches, colleges, 
and regiments, and act as jail-keepers in the house 
of bondage to take the poor panting fugitive slave 
when he came up into its Northern doorway in the 
hope of fleeing to Canada, and hurl him back into 
its dismal dungeons, or shoot him down with the 
revolver, but despite which terrible process forty 
thousand of these poor fugitives ran the gauntlet 
of bullets and blood-hounds across Northern hunt- 
ing ground before they reached Canada. 

Already we have referred to one of these violent 
partisans in the person of the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, who in a sermon preached from Exodus 
xiv. 15, according to the reporter of the New 
York Times, December 15, 1860, stood in its de- 
livery " six inches taller than usual, with his 
eyes flashing fire on Jeff. Davis and the Southerns, 
whom he designated as Pharaoh and his hosts, 
whilst he compared Northern soldiers to the 
Israelitish army in olden times, when they were 
coming out of Egypt and stood on the banks of the 
Red Sea." 

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, also, is another of 
these partisans who has made her appearance with 
a strange rhythmical chant in her hands, which 
she says " combined the barbaric fire of the Marsel- 
laise with the religious fervour of the old Hebrew 
prophet." 

The chant reads as follows : — 



god's overruling providence. 76 7 



" Oh, go down Moses, 

'Way down into Egypt's land ! 

Tell king Pharaoh 

To let my people go ! 

Stand away dere, 

Stand away dere, 

And let my people go ! 

" Oh, Pharaoh said he would go 'cross ! 

Let my people go ! 
Oh, Pharaoh and his host were lost ! 

Let my people go ! 
You may hinder me here, 
But me can't go up dere, 

Let my people go. 

" Oh Moses stretch your hand across ! 

Let my people go ! 
And don't get lost in the wilderness — 

Let my people go. 
He sits in de heavens 
And answers prayers, 

Let my people go ! " 

Would Moses have made speeches in the Northern 
and Southern States of Illinois like Abraham Tin- 
coin, opposed to each other as shewn in his published 
debates with the late Judge Douglas, so that when 
placed in juxta-position, there is nothing discovered 
in the place of the man who uttered them, but what 
Wendell Phillips in his review of them called " a 
big grease spot." Would Moses like Lincoln have 
solemnly avowed that he was as much an aboli- 
tionist as any man ; that 'he believed the right of 
property in a slave was not distinctly affirmed in 
the Constitution,' and that he would wish to be 



768 god's overruling providence. 



assassinated rather than violate the principles con- 
tained in that immortal document, the Declaration 
of Independence, and then, have sworn by the 
Eternal that he would maintain the Constitution as 
a slave document as shewn in the exposition which 
he gave of it in his Inaugural Address, March 4, 
1861 ; and also in the special emphasis which he 
attached to the necessity of senators and people 
recognising and endorsing its binding powers, and 
making good their oath ? Would Moses like Lin- 
coln have claimed to be the friend of the slave or 
the free-coloured population, and then have declared 
to them : — " You must know that we do not love 
you ; and the sooner you make arrangements to go 
to Siberia or Abbeokuta the better?" 

Would Moses like Lincoln have avowed to a class 
of intelligent men that an emancipation proclama- 
tion would be " as inoperative as a bull against a 
comet," and then have issued the same before the 
Convention in Chicago had time to receive the reply 
to their request as given ? 

Would Moses like Lincoln have dismissed or re- 
buked military generals friendly to freedom as in 
the case of Fremont, Hunter, and Siegel, and ap- 
pointed pro-slavery ones for fear the Border Slave 
States should go out of the Union like their 
Southern sisters ? 

Would Moses like Lincoln have avowed that "he 
would save the Union with slavery if he could, or 



god's overruling providence. 



769 



in part, and destroy it if he could not save the 
Union without ? " 

What a ridiculous farce to compare Lincoln to 
Moses. And yet it is gravely asked by one above 
all others we had thought had more sense and 
judgment, viz., Wendell Phillips : — " Who among 
living men may not envy him ? Suppose that, when 
a boy, he floated on the slow current of the Missis- 
sippi, idly gazing at the slave upon its banks, some 
angel had lifted the curtain and shown him that in 
the prime of his manhood he should see this proud 
empire rocked to its foundation in the effort to 
break those chains, should himself marshal the hosts 
of the Almighty in the grandest and holiest war 
that Christendom ever knew, and deal, with half 
reluctant hand, that thunderbolt of justice which 
would smite that foul system to the dust — then die 
leaving a name immortal in the sturdy pride of one 
race and the undying gratitude of another — would 
any credulity, however sanguine, any enthusiasm, 
however fervid, have enabled him to believe it ? 
Fortunate man ! He has lived to do it ! (Applause.) 
God has graciously withheld him from any fatal 
misstep in the great advance, and withdrawn * him 
at the moment when his star touched its zenith, 
and the nation needed a sterner hand for the work 
God gives it to do." 

In the presence of the above disclosures we can 
never burn incense to Abraham Lincoln ; believe 
that the baptism of blood in America is associated 
3c 



770 god's overruling providence. 

with the "grandest and holiest war Christendom 
ever knew," or admit that a country which has pro- 
duced such actors as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
Madison, Webster, and Henry Clay; Ward Beecher 
and Mrs. Stowe; Parson Brownlow, and Miss Dick- 
enson ; Abraham Lincoln or President J ohnson can 
ever establish a claim to be "the day-star of 
nations." 

How fearful must be the guilt of the ministers 
and people who have connived at, and extenuated 
the guilt of those monstrous crimes which made 
the judgments of Cod necessary to bury the United 
States in one common ruin ! We trace all the 
calamities of the war to the door of the American 
pulpit. If five millions of the avowed disciples of 
Christ could not create an atmosphere where slavery, 
colourphobia, high tariffs, a corrupt Christianity, 
and even our late war would have been impossible, 
by scattering the leaves of the tree of life which are 
for the healing of the nations, we are inevitably 
driven to the conclusion that they were not quali- 
fied for their work, had no proper conception of 
the objects or responsibilities of their mission, and 
have betrayed their trust. " One thousand wit- 
nesses," exclaims Mr. Phillips, "have crowded our 
highways, telling to the world the horrors of the 
prison house of slavery, in vain." Is it possible 
that they could have been true and faithful % One 
thousand- — five hundred — fifty, nay, even the fa- 
mous ten that would have saved the cities of Sodom 



god's overruling providence. 



771 



and Gomorrah, if they could have been found, might 
also have saved America from its deluge of blood, 
and consecrated it for ever to freedom ; but out of 
five millions of our " rifroarious" professionals, or 
of the more select " thousand witnesses," ten men 
could not be found that came up to the require- 
ments of God's word necessary to make real wit- 
nesses for Himself, such as He would recognise 
and delight to honour; and when Mr. Phillips put 
the question restricting its application to evangelical 
anti-slavery ministers, at the New England anti- 
slavery anniversary, held in Boston, 1860, only 
four names were given by two thousand people, 
and some of these, according to the testimony of 
Phillips, " not worth twenty-four to the dozen." 

We are indebted solely to the events of God's pro- 
vidence for the freedom of the slave, and not to 
man's agencies. His own right arm alone hath 
gotten to Him the victory. No sooner, however, 
did He take this glorious workout of man's hands, 
than numbers of old church sinners, who frowned 
upon us abolitionists, and added to our privations 
and anguish, became most fiery in their zeal to 
destroy slavery and the slaveholder as well, but 
were as blood-guilty in regard to slavery, as they 
have been bloodthirsty in the war which has just come 
to a close, Some of these are now masking socie- 
ties which are auxiliaries to the Federal govern- 
ment under the name of Freedmen's Aid Societies, 
in order to draw more effectually on the benevo- 



772 



god's overruling providence. 



lence of mankind, and are most eloquent and pa- 
thetic in their descriptions of the misery and suf- 
fering of the freed negroes, "Who," Frederick 
Douglas says, " require justice, and not generosity," 
at the hands of the Federal government and people 
in the Northern States of America, and the latter 
of whom find ample means to send agents to con- 
vey immense numbers of the ablest and best skilled 
workmen from Europe, free of expense to America, 
whilst they/turn away from the* Blacks, at their 
door, in tne Southern camps, and leave them to 
the cold pittance of charity, or to help themselves 
in the best way they can, when, by providing 
them the means of conveyance, as in the case of 
European white people, they would be able to keep 
themselves in freedom, and those who are depen- 
dent on them, without eleemosynary aid. 

How consoling to those of us, who have stood 
on the high places of the American church, and 
fearlessly and faithfully pointed out the dangers and 
duty of the American churches and people, and 
the coming storm of God's vengeance, until we 
were driven by the brutal hand of persecution 
from its altars, and from property and home, into 
exile, where we have been no indifferent spectators 
of the terrible calamities which have befallen Ame- 
rica. 

It is of little moment what others may think or 
say of us ; whether the scorner may pass by us 
with mocking tongue ; or whether we may be left to 



god's overruling providence. 



773 



the tender mercies of an unfeeling world, ours is a 
reward which no man can take from us. We feel 
amply compensated in the testimony of an approv- 
ing conscience despite the dangers through which 
we have passed, the years of tribulation we have 
been called to endure, and the loss of property and 
friends. We have been violently assaulted both in 
person and character, in America and England, by 
misguided zealots and partisans, but we commit our- 
selves to Him who judgeth righteously, and calmly 
await the issue. 

What a source of discomfort it must be to wicked 
men that there is One who is higher and mightier than 
themselves, who creates, plans, and acts alone, as 
the great originator, the supreme controller, and 
sovereign disposer of all events, the reasons and 
issues of whose sovereign will and pleasure in the 
creation, government, and disposal of all things are 
with Himself, and therefore underived and unim- 
parted only as He chooses to make them known. 
Had it been otherwise, according to the London 
Spectator j in the following comment which the editor 
made on an article called the " Inklings of Peace," 
we might tremble for the cause of liberty and the 
Divine Government itself The Spectator says 
that the New York Tribune, Sep. 21, 1862, holds 
out a distinct promise to the South that if it 
will return to its obedience before Jan. 1, the 
date at which the proclamation of freedom to the 
slaves takes effect, on the basis of the Constitution, 



774 god's overruling providence. 

it may rule the Union again, as of old, by the aid of 
the Northern Democrats. A 11 will be forgiven, and 
even a convention to revise the terms of the Consti- 
tution and give further guarantees to the South, 
might be conceded. Such is the language of the 
most earnest and the most anti-slavery of the Re- 
publican organs. It is difficult for England to 
conceive a dereliction of principle more shameful 
and infamous. After shedding oceans of blood in 
the cause which the Republican leaders have always 
asserted to be the cause of freedom, they offer to be- 
come once more, for a new cycle of shame -and 
misery, the tools of the men who have fought the 
cause of slavery. These idolators would not hesi- 
tate to vote slavery even into a future state " on the 
basis of the Constitution" if it would save a single 
star or stripe to the Union flag. Had they been 
consulted on the first great secession of archangels, 
there would have been no disunion between Heaven 
and Hell, and no Divine Government since. These , 
are the men who are now receiving such unquali- 
fied praise, whose pathway is to be strewn with 
flowers, and who are to receive the world's homage 
and esteem ! 

There is an old adage, that whilst man " pro- 
poses, God disposes." Neither government in the 
North or South intended to interfere with slavery 
when the war commenced ; but, eventually, both 
parties met face to face using the slave for the 
accomplishment of their different objects on the 



god's overruling providence. 



775 



basis of freedom. All parties, therefore, so far as 
negro emancipation is concerned, whether com- 
batants or non-combatants, actors in the fearful 
tragedy, or only spectators in this fearful contest, 
can take up the song of Whittier: — 



LAXJS DEO ! 

It is done 
Clang of bell and roar of gun 

Send the tidings up and down. 
How the belfries rock and reel, 
How the great guns, peal on peal, 

Fling the joy from town to town ! 

Ring, bells! 
Every tongue exulting tells 

Of the burial hour of crime. 

Loud and long that all may hear, 
Ring for every listening ear, 

Of Eternity and Time! 

Let us kneel ! 
God's own voice is in that peal, 

And this spot is holy ground. 
Lord forgive us ! What are we, 
That our eyes this glory see, 

That our ears have heard the sound ? 

For the Lord, 
On the whirlwind is abroad ; 
In the whirlwind He has spoken : 
He has smitten with His thunder 
The iron walls asunder. 

Loud and long, 
Lift the exulting sr.ng ; 
Sing with Miriam by the sea ; 



god's overruling providence. 



He hath cast the mighty down ; 
Horse and rider sink and drown ; 
He hath triumphed gloriously ! 

Did we dare 

In our agony of prayer 
Ask for more than He has done? 

When was ever His right hand 

Over any time or land 
Stretched as now beneath the sun I 

How they pale 

Ancient myth, and song, and tale, 
In this wonder of our days, 

When the cruel rod of war 

Blossoms white with freedom's right% 
And the wrath of man is praise 1 

Blotted out 

All within and all about 
Shall a fresher life begin; 

Freer breathes the universe 

As it rolls its heavy curse 
On the dead and buried sin I 

It is done I 
Tn the circuit of the sun 

Shall the sound thereof go forth. 
It shall bid the sad rejoice, 
It shall give the dumb a voice, 

It shall belt with joy the earth. 

Ring and swing 
Bells of joy ! on morning's wing 

Send the song of praise abroad : 
With a sound of broken chains 
Tell the nations that He reigns 

Who alone is Lord and God I" 



THE END, 



Just Published, in Crown 8vo, cloth extra, Price 7s. 6<L 

AMERICAN 
STATES, CHURCHES, AND SLAVERY. 

BT THE 

REV. J. B. BALME, 

AN AMERICAN CLERGYMAN. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

" Mr. Balme writes with considerable observation, some 
humour, and a positive air of sincerity. There is a sledge 
hammer method of oratory with which he knocks down all 
the idols of American enthusiasm, which renders it very 
easy to believe that he made himself a most unpleasant 
neighbour among the idolaters of the Union. The Jesuiti- 
cal cunning of Everett, the Pharoah's hard-heartedness of 
Lincoln, the hypocrisy of the Beechers and Mrs. Stowe, the 
unblushing sophistry of Seward, the impious inconsistency 
of most of the negro-hating emancipationists who are still 
clamouring to reduce the South by war, are held up to 
universal 'loathing and contempt' with a fervour which 
would probably land him in Fort Lafayette, if he were now 
within the reach of President Lincoln's police." — Satur- 
day Review , Nov. 8, 1862. 



" At the present momentous epoch in American affairs 
hardly anything can be published which does not contain 
more or less interest. Pamphlets and volumes which may 
have been published years ago are eagerly enquired after, 
since they are almost certain to contain facts and allusions 
which in some way bear on the great crisis that has suddenly 
riven a continent in twain. Mr. Balme's work, in spite of 
its imperfections, contains a vast amount of useful and im- 
portant facts, which are probably unknown to the great pro- 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



portion of English readers. And though much of what he 
writes is well known to them, it is acceptable as being re- 
corded in a permanent form. His opinion of the President, 
the Secretary of State, and other men in the government, is 
by no means flattering, and some extracts from their writ- 
ings and speeches are peculiarly interesting. As a book 
of reference, and containing much that is useful and curious 
this work will, we doubt not, find many readers." — Christian 
News, Aug. 30, 1862. 



" The author of this volume is British-born, but having 
emigrated to America he acquired property, and was na- 
turalized as a subject of the United States. Taught from 
his early years to regard slaveholding as a monstrous wrong, 
he did not, like very many of our countrymen who emi- 
grate, lay aside his anti- slavery thoughts and feelings, im- 
bibe the prevailing prejudices against the coloured races, 
and palliate and defend the enormities of the "institution." 
Instead of this, the more intimate his knowledge of the sys- 
tem the more deep-rooted became his abhorrence of it. 
Instead of speaking with bated breath upon the subject, he 
lifted his voice like a trumpet in behalf of the down-trodden 
negro, and vehemently denounced all who were directly or 
indirectly engaged in the accursed traffic. The result was 
such as might have been anticipated. He was subjected, 
not to petty annoyances and foul reproach, but to the most 
truculent and unrelenting persecution, being compelled, 
after a narrow escape from Lynch-law, to sail for England, 
in which he landed two years ago in a state of destitution. 
True to his mission as an apostle of emancipation, we find 
him here coming forward with unconquered spirit, telling 
the people of this country what he thinks of the Federals 
and the Confederates in their connection with slavery, show- 
ing the fearful extent to which the ministers of religion and 
the Christian denominations are implicated, and declaring 
that, in the war now raging, with its accumulated horrors, 
there are the tokens of Heaven's vengeance on the unfaith- 
fulness of those who profess to be witnesses for God. The 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



writer expresses his views with no small strength of lan- 
guage, but his character as a man of veracity is attested 
by abundant evidence, and he is careful to support the 
more important of his statements by documentary proof. 

"At the commencement of the war the people of the 
Free States had a golden opportunity of washing their 
hands of all further share in the guilt of slaveholding, and 
if they had at once taken the bold and honest step of de- 
claring all men equal before the law, recognising at the 
same time the claim for compensation on the part of those 
who, under the protection of legal guarantees, had acquired 
property in slaves, they would have secured the moral sup- 
port of Europe ; but few or none had the idea of equal rights 
to the black and the white man, and many who resisted 
the extension of slave territory were equally prepared to 
resist the removal of the legal brand of inferiority which 
was stamped on the African. The Union was the idol of 
the people, and to preserve nt they were willing, not only 
to abate their demands on the subject of extension, but to 
fence round the vile system with new and more effectual 
barricades. Having sown the wind they are reaping the 
whirlwind. 

" Those who are really desirous to know the position of 
the American Churches in regard to slavery will do well to 
procure this volume. Thoy will find ample evidence that 
even the Cheevers, and the Beechers, and the Stowes are 
not absolutely free of the taint, that the anti-British feeling 
of these is intense, and that they condescend, when it suits 
their purpose, to pander to the worst passions of the mob. 
We shall be glad to learn that Mr. Balme's book has a large 
circulation." — Morning Journal, Aug. 25, 1862. 



" We have already given samples of this thrilling volume; 
but we cannot withhold a general and very fervent recom- 
mendation of it. Its appearance is peculiarly seasonable, 
and its extensive circulation can scarcely fail to give an 
impulse to the reviving anti-slavery spirit of England. It 
is replete with facts, many of them of the highest import- 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



anco as touching individuals, churches and Christian com- 
munities. It is a book which may be opened anywhere 
and read straight on, for a spirit of life pervades the whole. 
It is quite a repertory of slavery matters, and greatly suited 
to the eventful hour which is passing over us." — British 
Standard, Aug. 29, 1862. 

" Mr. Balme may be regarded as a John Brown redivi- 
vus, except that he has not yet sealed his testimony with 
his blood ; and being an English Baptist, who only went 
to America in 1852, he has entered with energy into a 
matter of American sins and sorrows. We have said that 
this volume is amusing, but it is also instructive. Mr. Balme 
has gathered together a number of sayings of their leading 
men (Americans), which tell painfully against them, and 
illustrate the rotten state of their boasted civilization." — 
Scotsman, Aug, 16, 1862. 



" Mr. Baime expounds many phases of American society, 
and draws pictures that ought to startle those, who, like 
John Bright, have been in the habit of lauding the institu- 
tions of the new world as vastly superior to those of the 
old. He is unflinching in his denunciation of slavery and 
slave -owners, but he also strongly condemns the war carried 
on by the North against the South. He writes clearly, and 
enunciates his opinions fearlessly. We commend his book." 
— Leed's Intelligencer, August, 27th, 1864. 



u We sincerely wish that these letters could be put into the 
hands of every person in this country, inasmuch as they 
• are calculated to correct many of those misconceptions into 
which not a few of our countrymen have fallen, respecting 
the great quarrel in which the States of America are now 
engaged. The author shews himself to be perfectly familiar 
with all the facts and circumstances connected with the 
history of the United States."— Staffordshire Sentinel, May 
21, 1861 



OPINION OF THE PRESS. 



" It illustrates wide spread errors through all classes of 
the American community, and exhibits no less the mischiefs 
resulting from the dereliction of the fundamental duties on 
which their political institutions repose." — Morning Post, 
Aug. 29, 1862. 

" The circumstances of Mr. Balme's life have been such 
as to make him practically acquainted with the horrors of 
slavery. He had suffered much in behalf of the cause of 
freedom. For his advocacy of this cause we give him all 
honour." — Daily Review, Sept. 8, 1862. 

" Mr. Balme's experience enables him to teach with 
authority." — Wendell Phillips, Esq., Boston, Sept. 22, 1862. 

" Mr. Balme is a very extensive author, and the work 
before us is a very able exposure of slavery in all its forms 
and with all its patronage. The book is well got up, and 
will, we trust, have a rapid sale." — Glasgow Examiner. 
Sept. 13, 1862. 

" His book is replete with interesting matter ; a well 
furnished store house of facts." — Morning Advertiser, Aug. 
7, 1862. 

" Rev. J. P. Mursell, said, Mr. Balme had long been 
known to him by name as one of the most unflinching 
advocates of freedom in America, and had made it his 
object to purify the Church of the dreadful sin of slavery. 
He quite sympathised with his fervour and enthusiasm, and 
honoured him for it. He had not only advocated freedom, 
but suffered for it." — Report of a Public Meeting at the 
Town Hall, Leicester, May, 1861, in the Leicester Mercury. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



£< The appearance of the volume before us is well-timed, 
for at no period since the outbreak of the present war in 
America, have the Unionists on both sides of the Atlantic 
been more active to deceive the British subjects into the 
belief that the emancipation of the negroes is the chief 
object which the Northern public has in view in carrying 
on the conflict. When people in England, suspected of 
Southern proclivities, are charged with wishing to see 
established on the American continent, a new Republic, 
the chief corner-stone of which would be slavery, one is 
apt to suppose, that the old Republic, for the restoration of 
which soldiers are fighting and divines are praying, was 
altogether free from this particular sin of holding the negro 
in bondage, and that the men and women of the North who 
are suffering by reason of the war, are noble martyrs in the 
cause of freedom. There is a section of the English people 
who cherish this conviction. Ministers like the Rev. New- 
man Hall, whose feelings are stronger than their intellect, 
and politicians of the Bright and Cobden school, whose 
admiration of the Republican institutions makes them 
believe in anything sooner than the final disruption of the 
American Union, strive with all the eloquence that they 
have at their command to convince the English people that 
the North alone is deserving of their sympathies, that the 
South must in the end succumb, and that the result of the 
war will be the restoration of the Union, and the complete 
overthrow of the institution of slavery. Hence, we are told 
it is the duty of Englishmen to pray for the success of the 
stars and stripes, to flatter Mr Lincoln with unctuous 
addresses, while the cause of the South must be regarded 
with loathing and contempt. By such means as these, 
many a good, well meaning man has been induced to cast 
in his lot with the pro-Federals, and to become most ardent 
advocates of their cause. But we think that if these kindly 
disposed people had been acquainted with the real history 
of the slavery question, so far as the North is concerned, 
their attitude towards the South would be very different 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



from what it is at present. Mr. Balme in his work on 
the American States, Churches, and Slavery has given to 
the world this history, which, we would hope, is destined 
to work a great change in the minds of those who think 
that the Confederates alone are to blame for the existence 
and spread of slavery on the American continent. Mr. 
Balme is a vigorous and pleasing writer. He can be 
humorous and even pathetic at times, but the trenchant, 
sledge-hammer style becomes him the best, and woe be to 
the object of his wrath or censure. He is an uncompro- 
mising opponent of slavery, and a thorough hater of those 
hypocritical time-servers who, for the sake of pelf, once 
fraternised in Christian fellowship with the very men whom 
they are now seeking to exterminate. Had not the South 
seceded from the Union, there never would have been the 
present outcry in the North against slavery. When profit 
was to be made out of the system — when the Funds of the 
Missionary, Bible, and Tract Societies, were swelled, with 
what is justly called the " blood money " of the South — 
the pulpit then was silent. It was deemed no sin for 
Northern Christians to hold communion with Southern 
slaveholders. Whilst the South was for slavery, the North 
was not against it,and even after the war commenced, it was 
openly avowed that "if the Southerners would return to their 
allegiance to the Federal Government before the date given 
for Lincoln's proclamation to come into operation, the 
Federal Government would give them new guarantees for 
slavery." Before the war broke out even the Leeds 
Mercury — which is now the mouth-piece of the Yorkshire 
War Christians — admitted that " in almost every religious 
community even in the Free States, there is a majority who, 
whilst disliking slavery themselves, decline to make opposi- 
tion to it a leading article of their political and religious 
creed, and would object to form either political parties or 
religious associations on the basis of a thorough and con- 
stant antagonism to the dreadful crime of slave-holding." 
But this is not all. Northern Christians were not content 



OPINIONS OS THE PRESS. 



with tolerating slavery and fraternising with slave-holders ; 
they must needs make the sincere abolitionist, who would 
have nothing whatever to do with the accursed thing, an 
object of persecution. Our author was one of those un- 
fortunates, and the narrative he gives of the sufferings he 
endured for conscience sake, ought to be read by all who 
are inclined to think that the guilt of slavery attaches 
solely to the South. Mr. Balme thus forcibly sets forth 
the influence exerted by Northern Christianity on the 
Southern mind, in reference to slavery. " You," says the 
South to the North, " taught us that slavery was a divine 
and holy thing. You made slavery sacred as an institu- 
tion of the South, and fenced it about without, whilst we 
made it secure within ! You helped to enthrone slavery 
in the supreme government of the States and Churches of 
our land ! And when you quickened us into life, and 
nursed us into power, you bowed your necks to the yoke 
in servility, crouched at our feet, and crawled in the dust 
to pick up the 1 almighty dollar ' in your commercial policy 
that we might bear political rule over you ! Where wa s 
the constitution then ? And where were your black hoofs ? 
And as you have long set us the example of trampling 
upon what you call 1 constitutional rights and forms of en- 
lightened government,' now you think to rob us of our 
commercial dues when you take back our political power 
and rule ! But in this you are mistaken. At least we 
shall see what we will see." It is clear, then, that we 
should act unjustly to the South, if we should charge upon 
it the full sin of slavery. Northern Christians, Northern 
politicians, Northern men of business, are equal sharers of 
the guilt, and to pretend to be otherwise is the height of 
hypocrisy and deception. Abolitionism is only popular in 
FreeStates even now, when allied with the cause of the Union. 
On Mr Balme first entering a Northern pulpit the advice 
given to him by the leading members of his church was to 
" preach the Gospel, and let slavery alone." Because his 
conscience would not allow him to do this, he was literally 



OPINIONS OF THE PKESS. 



starved out. This took place at Chicago. Mr Balme then 
removed to St. Paul, Minnesotta, whither the malignant 
opposition of his adversaries followed him. He was vitu- 
perated and plundered of his property. " Stern necessity" 
at length compelled him to leave his home, and we ulti- 
mately meet with him at New York, where, after untold 
hardships, he arrived " with blistered feet and crunching 
pain in his limbs from rheumatic fever, the very picture of 
penury, sorrow and grief." He looked around, he says, 
for the "kind and gentle hearts that feel another's woe ;" 
but being an abolitionist, " he was shunned as the plague 
by the mass of the clergy and laity in New York," and, 
with few exceptions, he found it no better among the 
abolitionists themselves. He met with better treatment in 
Boston, where he obtained the means to secure a 11 deck 
passage " to England ; and he is now, he tells us, trying 
to raise the means to re-establish his mission in America 
by means of the press. We believe that Mr Balme, who 
resided in Hull before he went to America, is at present in 
the town ; and we are glad to learn that he has met with 
here a greater number of real friends of the slave than he 
ever found in the boasted Free States of America." — Hull 
News. 



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